Wilson's Ordeal
by Wandergirl108
Summary: A misunderstood gentleman scientist who only wants to do something right for once is tricked into creating a portal to his own imprisonment. What will he find in this pseudo-world he's been cast into? Will he ever be able to escape? Will his brilliant mind be enough to even keep him alive through the first night? And WHY is this happening? See also "Wilson's Trials".
1. Prologue

The clinking of the rod as it hit the sides of the glass beaker was drowned out by the by the blood pounding in Dr. Wilson Percival Higgsbury's ears. All the chemicals were together, and he only needed to stimulate them to just the right degree. He'd spent _weeks_ calculating the ingredients, and this time, he knew he had it…

When it was done, Wilson reached for the vial of other chemicals he'd mixed earlier. The chemicals in the vial had been left to slowly react with each other on their own, and the timing was just right. He grinned with excitement as he poured the vial's contents into the beaker. This time, it would-

_BANG!_

The entire mixture exploded in Wilson's face.

The noxious cloud from the reaction dissipated unusually quickly, but it was no less familiar otherwise. Wilson put his hand over his face. After a second, his hair, which had been blasted out of shape by the explosion, returned to its reliable, three-pronged shape with a _boing_. It always did that - Wilson had long ago stopped worrying about permanent damage to his hair - but he wished it didn't _have_ to do that, or at least not so often…

He sighed, dragged himself downstairs and across the room, and slumped down into his chair. _Another failure._

He really did try. Being what most people in the nearby town called a "mad scientist", he strived to create something that would make them see him for the noble gentleman he really was. He was still bitter about how they'd forced him to move out of town and into a shack in the forest far away from all of them…Sure, he'd done some experiments of seemingly questionable morality, but he really only wanted to do something that would benefit the whole world. If he could just find some way to create an amazing medicine, or a machine that everyone would be grateful to have - it didn't matter what exactly it would do, so long as it was something good…They would respect him - the would praise and admire him - and he wouldn't have to live so isolated from any and all human companionship…There isn't much point in being a gentleman if you're all alone, day in and day out…

He was very tired of this. It was always the same: Work hard, day and night, to develop a hypothesis and invention on which to base it; do everything precisely as he calculated; have it blow up in his face; then flop down in his chair and listen to the radio on the countertop next to him, the volume so low he could barely hear anything, and go through the same thoughts of loneliness and despair and depression…

"Say, pal…"

Wilson jumped about a foot in the air at the unexpected voice. Warily, he turned to his radio - the static in the voice he'd heard meant that it certainly had to come from there, though how it was so relatively loud was beyond him.

"Looks like you're having some trouble!" said the radio.

Wilson didn't jump this time, but he was still uneasy. He wondered if perhaps he finally had gone mad…but no, he was a scientist, he wouldn't imagine strange voices, not even coming from the radio…

"I have secret knowledge I can share with you," the voice went on.

Wilson's eyes widened at this. New knowledge? _Secret_ knowledge, at that? To go into an experiment _knowing_ something new, something _important_…

Wilson was so intrigued, even excited, he didn't give himself time to question what the mysterious voice's motives might be. He stood up from his chair and picked up the radio.

"…If you think you're ready for it," the voice added.

Wilson didn't hesitate. "Yes!" he exclaimed, nodding his head vigorously, an eager smile on his face.

"Ok, then!" said the voice, sounding just as eager as Wilson was.

There was a flash, and suddenly, information started pouring directly into Wilson's brain. He squeezed his eyes shut against the strange and headache-inducing sensation, raising the radio over his head as though he could dump the rest of the information out of the radio through the speaker. Visions flashed before his eyes - mathematical equations, molecular diagrams, images of devices, and other things so strange he couldn't identify them…

And then it was done.

Wilson opened his eyes, still more than a little shocked by what had just happened. It was almost offensive to him as a scientist for information to be transferred to his mind in such a direct way. He searched his mind for new content, and right away, he found an enormous plan for a machine with detailed instructions, as well as some other information he couldn't quite analyze yet. As he went through the instructions in his head, a smile spread across his face. _This_ was going to be a _real_ invention…

He immediately ran back upstairs to his workshop. Night had fallen already, somehow, but he didn't need sunlight. Wasting no time and refusing to question the logic behind the instructions he had been given, he got right to work.

He taped two rats together, binding them tight…He typed out formulas and equations on his typewriter, channeling the knowledge directly from his mind and through his hands…He put together mechanical and metal pieces together in ways he would never have thought to try on his own, twisting cogs into place by hand and using a hammer to knock structural pieces into place…He carefully painted over the metal with a black paint-like substance made from two certain chemicals he had never thought to put together (the instructions in his mind told him that this was very important, and far from aesthetic)…He twisted lightbulbs into place, having wired the device that was coming together surprisingly quickly to channel electricity in certain directions…He welded together seams that he would have thought to leave as they were…At the end, he even had to grasp a knife blade in his hand and cut his palm to allow his blood to drip into a mix of chemicals he _never_ would have thought to put together, never mind add his own blood to - the mixture exploded, but this time, he knew that that was supposed to happen, and he poured the resulting compound into what he guessed was analogous to a fuel tank…

Finally, it was ready. Wilson couldn't quite understand what he'd built, though - strangely, the knowledge he'd been given didn't include that information.

"Excellent!" said the voice from his radio, speaking up for the first time since he'd started working. "Now throw the switch!"

Wilson reached for the lever, but suddenly, he wasn't so eager to proceed. He had no idea what this machine would do - it could rip the very fabric of space and time apart, for all he knew. It certainly looked like something that would have that sort of purpose - not just on the outside, but also considering what he knew of its internal components…

He hesitated, his hand trembling in the air just an inch or two over the lever. For the first time in his life, Dr. Wilson Higgsbury was scared - scared by the potential consequences of inventing such a construction on the word of a mysterious voice that theoretically shouldn't even exist, never mind know what he was doing. He knew what people said about his failed inventions - that he'd been trying to devise something immensely powerful and destructive, something downright evil. What if someone had tricked him into doing just that…?

He pulled his hand back.

"_Do it_!" shouted the voice, the enthusiasm and encouragement in its tone replaced by anger.

Wilson jumped, then made a split-second decision, more afraid of the sudden malice in the voice he was hearing than he was of the machine he'd built:

He threw the lever.

Immediately, cogs started to turn, pieces started to shift, and suddenly, the enormous device unfolded itself into something much taller. There was a flash of light, and in it, Wilson saw a face in the new shape of this machine - a terrifying face, long and relatively thin, with a frightening grin that took up two-thirds of its length…

Wilson stepped back; suddenly, he was more afraid of the machine than anything else again. It looked like it was doing something, and Wilson got a very strong feeling that he didn't want to know what was going to happen.

The voice from the radio laughed wickedly, and Wilson knew he'd been tricked. He only barely had time to process this realization, however, before two hands that had seemed to be shadows thrown by the device reached up out of the floor and grabbed him, fastening around his chest. He tried to jump away from them, but he could feel himself being pulled down. Flailing his own hands as through hoping to grab onto the air itself to keep him from being taken by the nightmare hands, Wilson was sucked down through a dark portal through the floor, and with a pop, he and the shadows vanished.

Far away, though directly observing the events that had transpired, Maxwell laughed.


	2. Starting Out

"Say pal, you don't look so good," said a voice that was somehow both familiar and strange.

Wilson managed to register that he was lying on his back. He tried to stir, but he felt very weak, and his head hurt, as though it had been hit by something hard, though he had no idea how that could be or why. He knew that voice, though…

"You'd better find something to eat before night comes," the voice said, and Wilson heard a _poof_ sound.

Wilson forced his eyes open and pushed himself up into a sitting position - his strength was returning remarkably fast, and his headache was going away just as quickly, which was…

He lost his barely-started train of thought as he registered what he was seeing.

He was sitting on a very square patch of grass - about four meters by four meters, he guessed. Around that, the ground was darker and more barren, and there were trees - all evergreen trees, just like the ones that surrounded his house.

_Where am I?_ Wilson wondered. It seemed logical that he was somewhere in the forest that surrounded his house, but when he stood up and looked around, he couldn't see any of the mountains that were always visible in the distance from where he lived. He could see several sizes of trees - even some spindly, leafless saplings - but even they seemed different from the ones near his house, somehow.

Wilson sat back down, closed his eyes, and tried to think. He went through his most recent memories…Another experiment had failed miserably, he'd sat down in his chair, and then that voice had started coming through his radio-

He stopped. That voice! It had been the same voice as the one that had just told him to find food before nightfall - the difference that had made it strange was the lack of static from the radio.

He remembered building the strange machine somehow, with no idea what it was supposed to do…The mysterious man's impatience with his hesitance to activate it…The laughter he had heard through the radio as shadow hands had grabbed him and pulled him down…

_Whoever he is, he brought me here,_ Wilson concluded. _Wherever "here" is…_

_Where _is_ here, anyway? I was pulled into my own floor by shadow hands…_

Wilson sighed and shook his head. _Shadow hands_. A scientific anomaly, if not impossibility. And they had pulled him through the _floor_. _Through_ the floor! His floor was _very_ solid - it had supported the weight of every invention, big or small, he had ever tried to create - and to have been pulled _through_ it…

_There are two possibilities here,_ Wilson decided. _One: I have finally gone mad. I suppose it wouldn't be too surprising if that turned out to be the case, given my total isolation and constant failures. I'd be a bit disappointed by my own mind, though - a lot of things about all this have already contradicted common science…but if that_ is_ it, then there are also two secondary possibilities: One, I am hallucinating everything around me; or two, I am no longer hallucinating, but I was wandering through the forest around my house during all the hours I thought I was building that machine,__ though I would have to have walked quite a ways._

_The other possibility…is that I have been contacted and abducted by someone from a parallel dimension._

_That_ possibility was exciting. There were a lot of scientific theories about other universes and different planes of existence, but nothing had ever been observed or proven by anyone before. This would mean a whole new set of rules - it would be the most revolutionary scientific discovery in history! A wide grin split Wilson's face, and he stood up again. This very place, whatever it was, could turn out to be everything he had ever been searching for and more…!

_Provided I can get home,_ he realized, his mood sobering once more. He looked around again. _And it doesn't look like that will be happening anytime in the foreseeable future,_ he added to himself.

Again, he remembered the mystery man's advice to him to find something to eat before nightfall. He looked at the sky. It was hard to be sure, but it looked like the sun had risen recently, which would give him a full day to explore and find something…but while he was an expert in many fields, wilderness survival wasn't something he had ever directly studied. He would have to rely on innovation and his knowledge of plants in general in order to get by.

_Finding a way home is what's most important, but my first priority is to make sure I don't starve while I'm here,_ Wilson decided, and he chose a random direction and started walking.

He looked carefully at the trees he passed, trying to put his finger on what made them seem strange in and of themselves. _They're all piney,_ he thought. _Almost…too much so._

He stopped and took a closer look at one of the trees that _weren't_ piney - the saplings. _Baby trees are so cute,_ he thought as he looked. _How does this one survive without any leaves, though?_ For the sapling was completely bare. Really, it was just an enormous bundle of twigs that were all stuck together.

Twigs.

_It is the nature of man to conquer his environment, rather than submit to it,_ Wilson thought; _for a _gentleman_, this is more of a duty. If I'm going to be here for a while, I'll need tools, and sticks tend to be useful._

He stripped the slim trunk of the sapling of its branches in the space of only two or three seconds. When he was done, he had a bundle of twigs. The twigs were small, but they were very pliable, so maybe he could weave them together into a more useful shape.

Suddenly, the bare sapling wilted, as though the trunk no longer had the will to keep standing straight. Wilson stared. _How did that happen?_ he wondered. _How and why?_ He tapped the wilted stick, but it yielded no clues. Still, it looked…sad. It was almost as though it was bowing down in defeat at having its branches taken away.

_Well, that'll teach him to think he has the right to keep his twigs,_ Wilson decided, and he resumed walking, carrying his bundle in his hand.

Less than a minute later, he stopped again, noticing a tuft of grass. The grass was very tall, and when Wilson investigated it, he found that it was dry, but not brittle. He looked at the twigs in his hand, then back at the grass, an idea forming in his head.

He bent down, grabbed a sharp rock that was sitting on the ground nearby, and quickly cut the grass with it, leaving only some small stubs protruding from the dirt. _Grass is more useful than most people give it credit for,_ Wilson thought, having actually used it once or twice in some of his more…_strange_ attempts at invention. _Together with these twigs…_

He looked again at the twigs, which he had set down beside him. He quickly did a rough calculation in his head, and concluded that he didn't have _quite_ enough twigs for what he was thinking. _It shouldn't be a problem, though,_ he thought; _there are more of those saplings around here._

Then something else occurred to him, and he looked at the rock he was holding. He didn't know what kind of rock it was, but it was very sharp, and not too small, either. He looked back at his twigs again, getting another idea. _It's kind of primitive, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers…_

Not giving himself time for second, rational thoughts, he set down the rock and started weaving the twigs together into a sturdier whole, setting aside some of the longer, thinner ones. Once he had a short rod that wouldn't bend too much under stress, he picked up the sharp rock and the twigs he'd set aside and wove the rock into the base, the longest and sharpest side facing outwards. He had to carefully make a couple of small notches in the rock for the bendy twigs to hook onto, but nothing ended up damaged. It was a little crude-looking, but when he was done, Wilson had a tool that could barely pass as an axe.

He grinned at his creation. _I may be a failure at creating new inventions, but I can make things that are already tried and true,_ he thought to himself.

He stood up, turned to the nearest tree, and started chopping it down. The axe worked a lot better than he expected, and the tree was down in less than a minute.

"Take that, nature!" he shouted aloud, grinning as the tree fell. He felt good - better than he had in years. _This_ was how things were supposed to be: A gentleman in control of his situation and surroundings, and nature itself serving his purposes and bending to his will. If it wasn't for his passion for science and his dream of recognition, Wilson could already almost see himself staying here.

He quickly stripped the tree of everything unusable, then cut what he _could_ use into more manageable portions. When he was done, he had two decent-sized logs, as well as a pinecone that had fully matured. Out of pure intrigue, Wilson picked up the pinecone. It almost seemed to hum in his hand a little, as though a baby form of the tree it had the potential to grow into was inside and trying to get out. Wilson shrugged, then scooped out a handful of dirt from the ground and buried the pinecone, figuring he might as well.

At last, he stood up, his makeshift axe in his left hand. He looked at his logs and his bundle of grass, smiling at how quickly he was managing to acclimate to and conquer the wilderness he had been cast into.

And then it dawned on him.

_How am I going to carry all of this?_ he wondered, his grin vanishing. _It would be best for me to keep moving so I can find something to eat - and a way home, for that matter - but I went to the trouble of harvesting these; I won't just leave them here._

He sighed and walked over to the pile of grass. After examining it for a second, he decided it was worth at least _trying_ to stuff it into one of his pockets, so he gathered it up into a bundle in his fist and tried to cram it all into his right pocket.

The grass didn't resist.

Wilson blinked and looked down at his pocketed hand. He could still feel the grass he was holding, but he couldn't see any of it sticking out - all he saw was a bulge from his fist.

He pulled his hand back out, still holding onto the grass. The grass came out exactly as it had been put in, but it seemed to be coming from nothing. He put it back in again, and again, it vanished into his pocket.

_Now _that's_ interesting,_ Wilson thought; and, being a scientist, his natural instinct was to experiment.

He released his hold on the grass while it was still - theoretically - in his pocket, then pulled out his hand. His pocket looked completely empty from the outside. When he put his hand back into his pocket and tried to retrieve the grass, he found it without a problem and pulled it out again, completely unruffled. He stuck the grass back in, pulled out his hand, then opened his pocket without reaching in. He could see the grass, but while it didn't look any smaller, it seemed to take up almost no space.

_Somehow, a spatial anomaly has manifested in my pocket,_ Wilson thought, fascinated. _But is it my pocket, or is it this place I'm in?_ If the latter, it would support the possibility that he had been pulled into a parallel dimension, which, while exciting (and more than a little bit of a relief), would make finding a way home very difficult. Still…

On a hunch, Wilson walked over, picked up one of his logs, and tried to put it in his pocket. It seemed like a crazy thing to do, but like the grass, the log completely vanished into it. What was more, Wilson couldn't feel any of the weight that should come with carrying a whole log. He tried again with the other log, and got the same result.

_Absolutely fascinating,_ he thought. _I wonder if it's only _this_ pocket…_

He tried fitting his makeshift axe into his left pocket. Like everything he'd put in his right pocket, it vanished, its weight somehow negated.

_Amazing. I _have_ to find out what sort of rules make this work…_

He had none of his scientific equipment with him, though, and when he looked around, there was only nature in every direction as far as his eyes could see.

_Later,_ he decided; _for now, I should keep moving._


	3. The First Night

As Wilson walked through the forest, he made sure to gather as many grass and twig bundles and sharp rocks as he could, deciding he would get more logs when he was better acquainted with wherever the heck he was. All of the supplies he gathered fit perfectly in his pockets, and he couldn't stop marveling at it. He kept looking closely at the evergreens he passed, though - _something_ was strange-looking about them, and it was starting to bother him.

It was only a few minutes later that he found himself at the edge of a grassy field vaguely reminiscent of the one he'd found himself on when he had first woken up, except it was much bigger and fuller of life. There were still evergreens, saplings, and grass tufts there, but there was so much more: bushes with bright red berries, red birds and crows chirping or cawing and flying about or pecking at the ground, beautiful flowers of various kinds with butterflies flitting between them, a beehive that was abuzz with activity and bees flying around and landing on some of the flowers…and a small rabbit at the very edge of the grassy area, edging around on the ground very slowly.

_He's looking for carrots,_ was Wilson's first thought when he saw the rabbit. Then he blinked, wondering how he had come to that conclusion. _Rabbits like carrots, that's a commonly-known fact,_ he thought, _but in order for that rabbit to be searching for carrots, there would have to _be_ carrots in this area…_

He looked back at the life-filled field and noticed one or two very small plants sticking up out of the grass. _The earth is making plantbabies,_ he thought, trying to amuse himself. On a hunch, he walked over to one and took a closer look. He knew some things about plants, though he had never intensively studied botany…and this looked like it was probably…

He grabbed the tiny plant and pulled it out of the ground. The root came with it, and sure enough, it was a carrot.

_Great,_ he thought. _A carrot. All vegetable-y and yucky…_

He sighed. _Beggars can't be choosers._ He _was_ starting to feel hungry - which was a bit odd, since he hadn't been wandering around for much more than an hour - and if he was going to survive whatever the heck was happening, he needed to eat.

So he ate the carrot. Raw. Still covered in dirt. _If this is a common plant around here - which it may very well be - I'm going to have to get used to them,_ he told himself as he choked it down.

He _did_ feel slightly better after he was finished. _Carrots are nutritious, if nothing else,_ he reminded himself; _surviving nature means doing what's healthy, not what's comfortable. In theory…_

And then it dawned on him.

_How did I know there were carrots here?_ Wilson wondered, startled. _I saw the rabbit, and I knew it was looking for carrots, and that would mean that there were carrots around here…but _how_ did I know the rabbit was specifically looking for _carrots_?_

A lucky guess? No, he didn't think so - the thought had been too immediate, too certain, to have been a guess. Wilson knew the difference between knowing and guessing all too well, and he had _known_ about the carrots.

How?

Wilson sighed and rubbed his eyes. So many different mysteries to decipher, all equally interesting and important, plus everything he was being forced to do and accept just to survive…Multitasking was not Wilson's way - he went about his work by coming up with one idea or theory and then pursuing it single-mindedly until there was nothing left of it. This…all of this was just overwhelming, even for his brilliant mind.

He looked down; one of the flowers in the field was right next to his foot. It was very pretty, and he didn't think he'd ever seen or heard of its kind before. It had bright red petals and a small yellow bit that protruded from the center.

He smiled. For all of nature's irritating qualities, natural beauty was something even he could appreciate. Just looking at the flower seemed to soothe his nerves a bit, easing the tension in his mind ever so slightly. He bent down to smell it…

…then threw himself backward, coughing and gagging. The flower looked beautiful, but it _smelled_ awful! It smelled…like he did when he got so immersed in his work that he neglected to bathe for more than a week. _Like a common laborer,_ he thought, repulsed.

It only took a moment for him to catch his breath, but he didn't get up, instead just lying on his back for a minute. He was tired, mentally as well as physically. A bee flew over him, briefly silhouetted against the setting sun in his field of view before passing. It was headed for the flower he had formerly been admiring. _To bee or not to bee,_ Wilson thought, almost smiling. That really _was_ the question…

…_Setting sun_?

He blinked, alarmed, and forced himself back to his feet. No sooner did he get to his feet than the sun started to dip below the trees, casting the world into dusk.

_How did it get so late?_ he thought, frantic. _I would have sworn that it's only been an hour or so since I first got here…!_

_…Time moves at a very accelerated rate here, doesn't it?_ he thought, putting a hand over his face again. Of course. If this was a parallel dimension, why _should_ he have expected time to work the same way as at home?

The rabbit scampered to its burrow and disappeared, the butterflies all landed on flowers and hid themselves, and all the bees in the field returned to the beehive. It almost seemed like the setting sun frightened the relatively earthbound creatures.

_Animal instincts,_ Wilson thought. He had tried to develop an invention or two centered around analyzing how animals tended to be able to sense things humans could not, and while he had never been successful, he understood the subject matter very well. _I should pay attention to them - they know the rules of this place, and I don't. I don't have a shelter, though…_

_…but I _could_ make a _fire_. I have logs and twigs, and the grass I gathered is dry enough to be perfect tinder._

He quickly pulled all of the grass and twig bundles he had gathered out of his pockets, along with the two logs he had gathered using his makeshift axe (still amazed at how two logs had fit perfectly in his pocket). He then carefully put the two logs into what he hoped would be the most efficient arrangement for burning, then placed three of the grass bundles as sufficient tinder to set the logs on fire; all he had to do was light it. For that, he took only two twigs of one bundle - while he had never actually studied how to start a fire with only sticks, the principles of heat and thermodynamics were _very_ familiar to him, and he was sure he could figure it out without too much trouble.

It took him a couple of minutes, but he got the fire started. The grass burned very well, and the logs caught fire with surprising ease. Again, Wilson had to grin at his innovation and ability to master natural resources and use them for whatever he desired.

He looked back at the sun, and this time he watched for a minute to try to gauge how quickly it was moving. He guessed he had about fifteen more minutes until true night began, so to pass the time, he approached one of the berry bushes in the field.

The berries were red, and not of any sort he had ever seen before. Of course, he knew the old saying about eating the red berries, but somehow, he got the feeling that these weren't those infamous poison-berries. He picked the bush clean, though he wasn't quite sure why, then went back to sit by his fire.

The birds were still flying about, their behavior unchanged. Wilson wondered why the birds felt safer as the night approached than any of the other creatures seemed to. He carefully observed the ones that landed just a couple of feet away from him, and soon noticed a sharp contrast: While the crows looked exactly like the creepy species he was familiar with, the red birds were like nothing he had ever even heard of before. For some reason, they made him think of spring.

_Mental note,_ he thought: _First unidentifiable animal species I've seen here._

Trying to keep his mind occupied, he took a closer look at the handful of berries he'd gathered. Some looked redder than others, he noticed, though it was hard to be sure in the fading light. He still felt somehow certain that they weren't poisonous…and eating berries wasn't as repulsive a concept as eating a raw carrot. _I'll eat them one at a time,_ he decided, _and if I start to feel sick, I'll throw away the rest._

So he did. The redder berries seemed to taste better, but all of them were a lot more palatable than a dirty raw carrot. The trouble was, there weren't very many of them - only a dozen or so.

When he was done, Wilson had nothing to do but wait. He watched the sun sink below the horizon with a strange unease he couldn't understand - he wasn't sure why, but he was _very_ glad he'd made a fire to give him light.

As soon as the last of the sun's rays vanished, all of the birds around him chirped or cawed and flew away at the same time. Wilson's uneasiness intensified. The animals here were afraid of something in the night.

And then, mere seconds later, the darkness was absolute; Wilson was literally unable to see anything beyond the light cast by the fire. He looked up. There were no stars, and there was no moon that he could see. Except for his fire, everything was pitch black, and even the things his fire illuminated seemed partially bleached of color.

He shivered and edged a bit closer to the fire - the temperature drop that typically came with nighttime had happened all at once. _Definitely accelerated time, as opposed to a shorter day-night cycle,_ he thought.

Minutes passed. In the absolute darkness, Wilson had no way of knowing how much longer it would be until sunrise - there wasn't even anything on which to base a guess. The fire burned lower and lower, much more quickly than it would have in the normal world. The encroaching darkness scared Wilson very much, and as the radius of light thrown by the fire diminished, he edged closer and closer to the fire, until he was literally hunched over it so far that he risked falling in. It was almost as though everything outside his little island of light had ceased to exist - as though the darkness was literally swallowing the world.

He managed to feel a spark of frustration with himself for a moment. A scientist knew that the only way to discover things was to experiment, but he was simply too terrified by that dark nothingness to investigate it. The worst part was, he had no idea _why_. _The only way to understand this is to leave the light,_ he thought, _but I can't make myself do that, for reasons I can't understand unless I do._ It was a paradox that Wilson felt very conflicted about as a scientist.

As the night wore on, the fire burned lower and lower, its light fading at an increasing rate. When it got so low that the darkness was literally lapping at Wilson's heels with no sunrise in sight, he panicked and threw another of his grass bundles on the fire. The fire flared momentarily and burned a bit brighter, pushing the darkness back again. Wilson was relieved to see that the ground that had been cast into shadow was still there. He threw a bundle of twigs on the fire, too, and it grew a little more. He gave a small sigh of relief, though he didn't feel too much better.

He waited and waited, tossing more fuel on the fire whenever the darkness got too close. He didn't want to waste his grass and twigs, so he used only as much as he needed to keep the fire burning.

And then, suddenly, something shifted, and the darkness vaporized right before Wilson's very eyes.

He blinked and looked around. The field he'd been in was still there, and exactly the same. The birds came back and resumed their previous activities, a bee left the beehive and flew to a flower, and a butterfly fluttered up out of another flower a short distance away. When he looked up, he saw that the sun had somehow risen all at once, and was situated just over the trees, about where he'd seen it when he had first arrived.

Strange.

Wilson decided not to question it, though - the night was over, and that was what mattered.


	4. Science

Scowling, Wilson watched his fire burn itself out until there were only ashes left. His relief at the arrival of the dawn had passed, and now he just felt irritated. _Is this really what I've been reduced to?_ he asked himself. _Cowering next to a simple campfire through the night, too afraid of the dark to even think?_ He shook his head. _I need to get out of here,_ he thought, with much more conviction than before.

A gentle breeze blew the ashes from the fire into the air as Wilson gathered his remaining twig and grass bundles and stuck them all back into his magical pockets. Then he took out his axe and cut down the nearest tree for some logs, in preparation for the likely event of him needing to build another fire soon. He got three logs and two pinecones out of the one tree, and this time he decided to keep the pinecones, figuring they'd probably make good tinder. He looked around one last time…then sighed, bent down, and pulled up another carrot, which he stuck in his pocket. _That should be everything,_ he thought; _I need to keep moving._

He continued walking in the same direction he had been headed before. His head felt a bit odd - he didn't quite have a headache, but it felt like there was just the tiniest bit of pressure on his brain, and he couldn't shake the feeling away, making it hard for him to feel as optimistic as he had the previous day. After a minute, he remembered to keep gathering materials, and he expanded his list of things to collect to include carrots and berries. He gathered everything automatically, his mind consumed by various theories and solutions regarding his predicament. Unfortunately, in the verdant land, it was somehow easy to mistake a flower for a carrot, or vice versa, at a glance, and more than once, Wilson got a lungful of the flowers' foul stench. It didn't take long for him to notice that all of the flowers smelled exactly the same, despite their varied appearance. _They don't even make sense,_ he thought grumpily as he was repelled by a flower for the seventh time that day, his almost-headache not at all helping his mood.

After the tenth time, Wilson had had enough. _Regardless of their smell, pretty flowers are meant to be _picked_,_ he thought, and he grabbed the flower that had just offended him - a simple white flower, almost reminiscent of a daisy - and yanked it off its stem. He smirked at the now-dying plant in his hand, his head feeling a bit better. _I showed that flower who's boss,_ he thought smugly. I_ am the most powerful thing here, and nature will bend to my will._

Out of pure curiosity, Wilson smelled the flower again, wondering if the stench would fade after death and, if so, how quickly.

He didn't smell anything.

_Interesting,_ he thought. _Maybe I'm better off picking these after all._

From then on, he did. Somehow, the act of picking flowers, while not an activity he had ever actually engaged in before, made him feel better about whatever was going on, and helped ease the tension in his head. _I'm not a wildman,_ he thought as he picked them; _I am a gentleman, a refined and dapper fellow who can appreciate things at a far higher level than animals can. I am also a scientist, and a brilliant one at that. I won't let being stuck in the wilderness turn me into some sort of savage; I will conquer it all with the power of my mind!_

_…Even if I have to eat raw carrots._

He still hated that.

It was about midday when Wilson noticed a trail worn into the ground a few feet away. At the sight, relief surged through him. _I'm not alone here, wherever here is!_ he thought, elated. _Whoever made this path…_

_…or _what_ever made this path,_ he amended, deflating, realizing that it could simply have been worn into the ground by animals. Still, that would mean that there were at least larger animals to be discovered here. What was more, a path would give him an actual direction - surely, it had to go _somewhere_.

Wilson started following the path, choosing the direction closer to the way he had already been going. The ground was much more even, and Wilson felt comfortable walking a bit faster while still being mostly lost in his thoughts. He also felt more at leisure to cut down some more trees to gather more logs and pinecones - of course, he very much hoped he wouldn't need them, but he didn't want to be caught unprepared. He only cut down the biggest trees he saw, wanting to get as much wood as possible. After he cut down four, he started to feel like he was about to figure out what bothered him about the trees. When he cut down the fifth one since finding the path, however, his makeshift axe shattered, having lasted just long enough to bring down the last tree. _I can always make another,_ Wilson thought as he gathered what he could from the felled evergreen; _I'm just glad that it worked as well as it did while it lasted._ Unfortunately, the shock of the tool breaking in his hand had derailed his previous train of thought, and whatever it was about the trees that bothered him went back to being a mystery.

After walking down the path for about fifteen minutes, the ground beneath him changed from grassy to rocky; around him, the various plants gave way to gigantic boulders.

Wilson approached one of the huge rocks. This_ is too big to fit in my pocket,_ he thought. _Still, if I could break it down somehow…_

He thought for a moment, then got an idea. He pulled some of his twig bundles and sharp rocks out of his pockets and studied them closely. _It will require more weight than an axe, as well as a sturdier handle,_ he thought as he began arranging his materials on the ground. _A pickaxe is what I need…Perhaps the same shape would be more efficient as well…_

It took two sharp rocks and two bundles of twigs - the extra twigs being needed both to secure the extra stone and to reinforce the handle - but Wilson managed to put together a makeshift pickaxe with just a few minutes' worth of work. Again, he grinned at his creation, feeling very reassured by his ability to make full use of what nature had to offer.

He took a swing at the boulder he had approached. Rock met rock with a loud _crack!_; though the boulder didn't look very damaged, Wilson knew that its structure had to be at least partially weakened.

He took another swing, and then another. After being hit three times, large cracks appeared all over the boulder's surface. Wilson grinned and struck harder. Two more blows, and the boulder started to crumble…

_Bang!_

With one last blow from Wilson's makeshift pickaxe, the entire boulder broke apart, almost explosively. Wilson allowed himself a small whoop of victory before gathering what was left.

Some of the rocks left behind were sharp enough for Wilson to use to make more tools later on; others were simply rocks, not useful for making tools but, Wilson thought, possibly useful for making other things. Along with those, there was a handful or two of a yellowish substance that Wilson couldn't identify. _I'm not a geologist,_ he thought, almost sadly. _Still, I could probably find _some_ use for this stuff, whatever it is, somehow…_

Dusk came as Wilson continued breaking big rocks and gathering the pieces. After just a few, he discovered some boulders that were larger and different in color. Curious, though not particularly hopeful for something groundbreaking, Wilson smashed one of those, too. No yellowish powder came out of it, but among the rocks that were left behind, Wilson found a single nugget of pure gold, about the size of his two fists put together.

He stared at the unexpected treasure for a minute, then walked over and picked it up. _Back home, this would be incredibly valuable,_ he thought, _but out here in nature…well, I can't eat it, so it isn't very helpful. It sure is shiny, though…_

Its shininess was fading right before his eyes as the sun set, however, and Wilson decided to make another fire without doing any more mining.

Once he had a fire going, Wilson pulled out all his supplies, hoping to find a way to keep his mind occupied through the night this time. Now-odorless flowers, berries, carrots, twigs, grass, logs, pinecones, sharp rocks, not-sharp rocks, yellow powder, a gold nugget, and his makeshift pickaxe (which was probably about to reach its durability limit, too)…He had a lot of stuff, but he wasn't really sure what to do with most of it.

He ate a few handfuls of berries and a carrot. Seriously. Carrots. He shook his head. _Eating roots straight out of the ground like an animal,_ he thought; _disgusting._ He glanced at his fire. _I could at least _cook_ my food…_

He took a minute to figure out a way to safely roast a carrot, then did so. The result was mushy, and somehow even worse-tasting than before, but at least it was a bit less primitive.

At last, the sun set, and once again, darkness swallowed the strange world Wilson had been trapped in. Just as it had the previous night, the darkness awoke some primal instinctive fear in Wilson, though he still wished he could get some idea of what exactly he was afraid of.

He tossed a pinecone on the fire every now and then to keep it going. He didn't feel too much like sleeping, and the ground was far from comfortable enough to rest on, anyway. That was okay - he'd gone weeks without so much as a real nap before; he'd last.

He looked through his collection of flowers by the firelight. He'd gathered about a dozen or so. They were varied, and very pretty, but they weren't useful in any sort of practical way. About halfway through the night, Wilson found himself weaving them together by the stems, out of a combination of nervousness, boredom, and his enjoyment of creating things with his hands. Before he knew it, he'd made a full circle of flowers, like a garland. Somehow, it started to give off a faint smell, though this one was almost pleasant in a way. _It smells like prettiness,_ he thought, unsure whether to be disgusted or amused.

He considered for a moment, then put it on his head. _How about _that_, nature?_ he thought smugly. _I'm _wearing_ you! I turned you into something I can _wear_! And it looks _pretty_!_

He grinned.

After that, though, he really had nothing else to do but wait. The oppressive darkness felt no less malevolent than ever, and having nothing to do wasn't very helpful. Wilson studied the other materials he'd taken out of his pockets, trying to think of something else he could do with them. His eye kept being drawn to the shiny lump of gold…

Then, mere seconds before the dawn, Wilson got an idea.

It was a crazy idea. It was a _stupid_ idea. But Wilson had never let facts like those keep him from trying something - he'd taught himself not to discount possibilities long ago, and he wasn't about to start now.

He barely noticed the sudden sunrise as he cleared a space in the middle of his inventory. _If I can put these together the right way…_

Well, he didn't know what it would do, but it wasn't unusual for him to go into a project blind.

He tinkered with his materials for a while, muttering fragments of his thoughts to himself out loud, as wasn't entirely unusual for him when he was trying to build something:

"Put that like that…and then if that could…No, no, more like…Yes, and then…No, but if _this_ could…and then…yes…No no no, let that…Okay, good…and then put this here…Hmm…no, more like _that_…Maybe if I could…No, but what if…There we go…and then let this sit like _this_…and put that together there…and now if I could just…No, not like that, but…more around like this…Yes, there we go…and then…yes…Yes!…Yes, yes, _yes_! Haha!"

He stood up and stepped back, admiring his creation. It had taken four logs, a bunch of rocks, and the nugget of gold beaten out into several shapes, but he had managed to create…_some_ sort of machine. It was functional, clunking away in front of him, the moving parts moving as they were supposed to when it was idle.

_Now to test it,_ he thought. _Assuming this doesn't blow up in my face like everything else I invent, it _should_ break objects down into their scientific components - I should be able to see things in materials that I wouldn't have understood before._

He decided to try it on some grass first - grass was harmless enough, after all. He tossed three bundles into the top of the machine, then pulled the lever.

_Clunk, clatter, clatter, clunk, ding!_

With a puff of smoke, the machine released the grass. The pile was broken down in a way that Wilson felt like he could replicate on his own from memory…and which he could easily see how to weave into…

Without even thinking, Wilson grabbed the grass and wove it together, and within minutes, he had some very sturdy lengths of rope.

He looked at the ropes. Then he looked at his machine. Then he looked at his ropes again. A knot in his gut that he hadn't even noticed before released, and a triumphant smile spread across his face.

_Science._


	5. Reality

Wilson spent all of that day tinkering with his materials and his science machine. Ah, how he loved tinkering. It was amazing what you could discover just by throwing things together and seeing what might do something, and Wilson found to his surprise that a _lot_ of his things had uses he wouldn't have seen on his own. Occasionally, he had to run back to the grasslands to gather more materials - even materials as simple as grass itself - so he could keep discovering new uses for them.

Every time he discovered a way to make a prototype of something new with the help of his machine, he felt a little jolt of giddiness. None of his inventions had ever worked this well before - every single time his science machine did its job, it made him feel so _alive_. He felt good - better than he had in a long time! In fact…Wilson was almost starting to feel at home. _I've been a lot happier here than I have been at home, at least,_ he thought to himself as he worked. _And what's the difference, really? I'm alone here, I was alone there; I'm doing science here, I tried to do science there…except it didn't go nearly so well at home…_

_Why was I so eager to leave?_

Of course, he still hoped to return home _eventually_, so he could share his amazing discovery with the world and finally get some recognition, but it didn't seem quite so urgent anymore. Everything was…good. All was well in this strange, peaceful world. There was too much nature, true, but Wilson felt more and more confident that he could fix that, as he discovered more and more things he could do with what he had.

The dusk and subsequent night still brought its unsettling malevolence, but it didn't bother Wilson quite so much, preoccupied as he was with his invention. When it got too dark to see, he simply wove some twigs and grass together into a torch and lit it on fire, then continued working by torchlight through the night. He did note, when the sun rose the next morning, that a single torch had lasted the entire nighttime, even though both grass and twigs burned quickly. He considered for a moment, then decided that, like his magic pockets, he shouldn't question it.

When he felt like he had done every useful thing he could with what he had, he decided to pack up his things - which now included several new tools and improved materials - and continue exploring. He crammed everything back into his pockets without really thinking about having room - having magical pockets had already started to feel normal, somehow - so he was startled when, as he went to stuff some rope into his pocket, his hand was stopped just outside the pouch.

He looked down at his hand, confused, then reached over with his other hand and pulled his pocket open so he could see what might be the problem. As he expected, he could see all the other things he'd put in his pocket (more or less), but this time, they seemed to somehow _fill_ his pocket. He tried putting the rope in again, this time while he was watching, and saw that his hand simply couldn't go into his pocket.

_Interesting,_ he thought. _So there _is_ a limit to how much I can put in these pockets…_

He tried putting the rope in his other pocket - which didn't have as much stuff in it - but it, too, turned out to be full. _What exactly determines how much I can put in my pockets?_ Wilson wondered, surprised. _Is it completely arbitrary? No, it can't be, there must be _some_ principle…_

He still had several things - not just his rope - that he needed to pack up before he could leave, though. He wasn't going to just leave his inventions and their components on the ground and walk away, after all - it was bad enough that he would have to leave his science machine behind, even though he would be able to create another…

_My science machine…_

_Could I make something for carrying my stuff in? _he wondered. He hadn't thought to try that before, since he'd thought the storage space in his pockets might be infinite, but now…

He pulled out several bunches of grass and twigs. _Grass to replace cloth, and sticks for structure,_ he thought; _that makes sense, right?_ He'd been able to make a whole hat out of just grass, after all…

"Hey, buddy," Wilson said aloud to his machine (not the craziest thing he'd ever done) as he tossed in the grass and twigs, "can you help me out here?"

He pulled the lever.

_Clunk, clatter, clatter, clunk, ding!_

Reliable as ever, the machine cranked out several bundles of both grass and twigs, broken down to show how they could be used. _Oh, the things I can do with this,_ Wilson thought as he wove the grass and twigs together as indicated. _If I experiment more, who knows what I could make? I'd like to stay here and keep experimenting…but I've barely seen any of this place - I don't know what else there might be out there._

Wilson finished his new creation: a backpack. It wasn't too terribly big, but Wilson figured that if he put all of his really bulky items in his pockets, the backpack would be able to carry the rest.

He picked up the backpack with one hand and resumed collecting his things off the ground, just to get everything together. He'd put in rope, rocks, and another nugget of gold before he realized that the backpack wasn't getting any heavier.

He stopped and looked in his backpack. As with his pockets, he could see everything he'd put into it, but even though it should have been enough to fill the bag more than halfway, there was still a lot of room left for other things.

Wilson frowned; this seemed too convenient. _I _just_ created this backpack, with my own two hands,_ he thought; _when and how did this spatial anomaly manifest?_

After grappling with the question for a minute, he sighed and gave up. _Don't question it,_ he told himself. _You don't know the rules here. Maybe _every_ type of container in this world becomes a lot bigger on the inside than it is on the outside…_

In any case, Wilson was able to pack up the rest of his things and resume his journey along the path well before midday. After just a few minutes, though, the path suddenly stopped, right in the middle of nowhere.

Wilson stared at the path's abrupt end for a moment, then looked around, trying to find something that would explain the path ending in this particular spot. He searched all around every individual boulder within sight of the path's end, scrutinizing both the rocks and the ground. He looked high and low, and even tried searching the sky at one point. It was past noon before he concluded that there was, in fact, no logical reason whatsoever for the path to end here.

That bothered him.

_Whether it's made by the trampling feet of animals or people, all paths go _from_ somewhere, _to_ somewhere else,_ he thought; _that's how they happen in the first place. This path seems to have come from _nothing_…was it even made _by_ anything? If not, how and why is it even here?_

Getting a little bit worried, Wilson turned around and started following the path in the other direction - he had come across it somewhere in its middle, after all, so maybe there was something the other way. As he left the boulders (and his science machine!) behind him and proceeded back through the lush, plant-filled terrain, he noticed a tree stump to the path's side - one of several he'd left behind.

_I could probably make use of that, actually,_ he thought, and he stopped and took out one of his new creations: a shovel. He wedged the tip underneath the stump, then pushed down hard on the handle, trying to lift the stump out of the ground. After only a moment of resistance, the stump gave in and ripped out of the dirt - it was even easier than Wilson had anticipated. The surrounding grass almost seemed to grow over the puckered wound in the earth that the tree's roots had left behind in the short time it took Wilson to strip away the roots and turn the stump into another useable log. Without thinking, he stuck the resulting log into the pocket opposite the one he'd taken his shovel out of…and it fit inside perfectly.

Wilson blinked, then looked down at his pocket. Yep, the log was in there, added to a number of others that he'd put in. _How was there room to…Oh, never mind,_ he thought wearily with a sigh. _Again, I don't know the rules here…_

No sooner did he finish thinking that than, with a _shwoop!_ sound, a rather small-sized evergreen tree right next to him - just barely within his field of view - suddenly sprouted, almost doubling in size.

Wilson jumped, his heart pounding, fixating his eyes on the tree. He caught his breath after a minute, but kept staring. His first thought: _I _knew_ there was something strange about these trees!_

His second thought: _What the heck just happened?_

Slowly, he looked around at the other trees he could see from where he stood…and then, he realized what had bothered him so much about them:

They were all the same.

He counted three different sizes of tree - as well as a few that had lost all their needles and were presumably dead - but each tree of a certain size was identical to every other tree of its size. To make absolutely sure, Wilson walked up to several individual trees and studied them carefully, comparing them to others of their size. Yep, they were the same: same height, same number of branches, same number of pinecones, same _arrangement_ of branches…they didn't even vary by outside perspective - each tree's branches were aligned in respect to the points of the compass in the exact same way.

After he'd seen enough to confirm this beyond any doubt, Wilson stepped backwards, away from the last tree he studied, until his feet found the path again, then stopped. His mind was racing, linking all sorts of things that had seemed off about his entire situation:

The extra information he had received from the radio that he hadn't been able to process back home…The voice that had instructed him after he'd been taken away before he could even open his eyes to see where he was…The perfectly symmetrical square of grass that he'd first found himself in…The spatial anomaly in his pockets that allowed him to carry much more than should have been possible…The way he'd known about the wild carrots that grew around here just by seeing a rabbit…The instinctive, deep-seated fear he shared with all the other animals for the pitch-black night…The foul, identical stench of every different flower…The way a nugget of pure gold had appeared out of nowhere, just from him breaking a big rock…The way his science machine had worked so perfectly…The fact that a torch made of a few twigs and some grass was able to last an entire nighttime…How the path he'd been following had ended for no reason…And now, the way the trees were all exactly the same…

All of it pointed to one, very unsettling conclusion:

_This place isn't real. Or at least, not the way _home_ is real…_

He hadn't just been pulled into another dimension - whoever had brought him here had _created_ this place and dropped him into it, the same way he would lock a lab rat in a maze. That really did seem like the most logical explanation, all things considered, and it brought Wilson both relief and fear - relief, because no one would put a lab rat in a maze that didn't even have an exit for the rat to find; and fear, because whoever had brought him here was a lot more powerful and dangerous than Wilson had ever imagined, and besides which, scientists generally didn't release their lab rats, even the ones that _do_ manage to find their way out of a maze…

Or maybe he'd just gone mad - there was always that possibility. Somehow, though, he didn't think so…

_What have I gotten myself into?_ Wilson wondered, the true scope of his ordeal coming into focus. _All I wanted was to invent something that would earn me respect - how did I end up as some sort of demigod's plaything?_ He lamented how easily he had been tricked - how he'd been so desperate to do something big that he hadn't even thought to question his instructor's motives. _I shouldn't have been so trusting of a mysterious voice coming from a radio,_ he thought remorsefully. _Really, why didn't I take a moment and _think_? It doesn't make any sort of rational sense to fully trust someone whom you've never even spoken to before, never mind someone you've never actually met, _and_ who knows a lot of things he shouldn't to boot…How could I have been so gullible? I should have said no. I should have continued my work. I would have come up with something eventually, wouldn't I? It would have been my _own_ work, anyway, not something that someone _else_ gave me…_

_…I'm such a fool…_


	6. Otto von Chesterfield, Esquire

Wilson continued down the path miserably, gathering what he needed along the way. He had never felt so stupid in his life. He _wasn't_ stupid - he was a _genius_! And yet, here he was, a lab rat in a maze…or worse, maybe. _Someone - or some_thing_ - built an entire world and trapped me in it,_ he thought; _who knows what else there is to this place? I've felt safe here…well, mostly, at least - excluding the nighttime - but I doubt that this place is as tame as it seems. Have I simply been lucky to not run across anything dangerous? Surely, there must be a lot more to fear than just pitch-blackness…_

He felt very glad that he'd at least used his science machine to build a spear. His thought at the time had been that he might use it to hunt for food - highly primitive, yes, but it was the best he could do with what he had, and above the level of animals, at least - but now, he wondered if he'd need to _defend_ himself from things. He thought back woefully to some of the experiments he had run during the earlier days of his career as a scientist - to all the things he'd put in mazes for lab rats to either avoid or seek out. He had been trying to test animal instincts in those experiments, hoping to figure out how they worked and maybe even discover a way to translate them into something humans could use.

What he'd gotten was a lot of dead rats.

Of course, he was a brilliant gentleman scientist, not a simple lab rat, so he had the advantage of intelligence and ingenuity; but his captor was proportionately more than a human gentleman scientist - even a brilliant one - running an experiment, as well…

Wilson was so lost in thought that he stumbled and nearly fell when his feet hit the stones.

Just barely catching himself, he quickly shook his mind clear of his ponderings and actually looked at the ground where he was walking. The path he had been following had ended, but at its end was a new path, almost perpendicular to the first, that was paved with flat stones and mortar.

Wilson's eyes widened. _This_ can't_ be a natural path,_ he thought. _Maybe there _are_ other people here…Or maybe there's some other sort of sapient life form _besides_ humans here that builds paths…? Or maybe it's nothing at all - how would I know?_ Feeling hopelessly out of his depth, Wilson sighed and turned right, following the new path. This time, though, he kept his ruminating to a minimum, trying mainly to pay attention to what was around him. _I was lucky that all I ran into was a paved road; I need to be more alert._

The forest around the road grew thicker as Wilson walked, until it almost felt like the trees were walling him in. After a few minutes, Wilson thought he saw a strange substance on a spot on the ground, coming from behind a few of the trees. Curious, though perhaps foolishly so, he stepped off the path to investigate. He found that whatever was coating the ground was sticky, enough so that his foot stuck to the ground as soon as he stepped on it, severely impairing his movement. He decided to go around it, hoping to maybe find its source…and after pushing past just a couple of trees, he did.

There, in an egglike shape that was almost taller than Wilson, was an enormous structure made entirely out of spiderwebs. The webbing was thick - thicker, Wilson thought, than normal spiderwebs - but it was unmistakably a spiders' nest.

Wilson swallowed; he hated spiders. Oh, sure, he'd experimented with their venom and body parts such, but _living_ spiders - _moving_ spiders - were far too much. _And this nest is _huge_,_ he thought; _what could be inside? Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of regular-sized spiders, or several gigantic, big-enough-to-eat-a-person spiders?_ He wasn't sure which would be worse, but somehow, the latter seemed more likely.

In spite of himself, Wilson wanted to know for sure what exactly was inside the nest. He didn't see so much as a hint of movement in it, though of course, that didn't necessarily mean anything. Driven by a scientific curiosity that was sure to be the death of him, he took a step towards the nest, his foot sticking in the web-coated ground. He took another step. Then another…

"Raaargh!"

With a gurgling exclamation that was something between a growl and a hoarse roar, a giant spider suddenly came out of the nest. It was significantly smaller than Wilson, but still big enough that if it were to bite like an animal, it would do significant damage. It didn't have a head or abdomen like real spiders - just a round, black, somewhat-fuzzy body with a few legs attached…_six_ legs, oddly enough - two large front legs and four vestigial legs - even though it was definitely supposed to be a spider. Its mouth - a simple gap in the body below the numerous white eyes, almost more human than spider - hung partway open, showing off its teeth. The legs made a clattering sound as the spider crabwalked toward Wilson.

Wilson quickly tried to back away, almost tripping from the stickiness of the terrain as he backpedaled. After he got just a few steps away from the edge of the webby ground, the spider stopped. "Raaargh!" it said again, opening its mouth twice as wide and closing its eyes as it did so, making the exclamation almost look like a battle cry. Wilson froze in place, reaching for the pocket where he'd stored his spear, his heart pounding. A split second later, the spider crabwalked the other way and disappeared back into the nest.

His scientific curiosity _more_ than satisfied, Wilson quickly jogged back to the road he'd been following and resumed walking.

_What _else_ is here?_ he wondered fearfully. _Do those spiders ever come out on their own, or am I safe if I just stay away from the nests?_ Somehow - he didn't know how - he got a feeling that the spiders were only sleeping in their nest because it was daytime.

_I _have_ to find a way out of here._

Dusk came a few minutes later. In the distance, Wilson thought he heard the "Raaargh!" of a spider, but he couldn't be sure. Unnerved, and unwilling to stay in one place for the night this time, he quickly put a torch together in preparation for dark and stowed it in his backpack (his pockets being full), then went on.

The rest of the evening was uneventful, though Wilson could swear he heard the clattering sound of spiders' legs through the trees every now and then. As the sun vanished below the horizon, Wilson took out his torch, lit it, and kept walking.

In the pitch-black of night, the world Wilson walked through felt very different. The darkness felt as malevolent as ever, and he hadn't realized just how little light a torch provided when he'd only been inventing things by torchlight; now that he was using it to move through the dark, he felt unnerved by how little he could see ahead of him. The clattering sounds got louder sometimes, and once or twice, Wilson _knew_ he heard the "Raaargh!" of a spider, but he had no way of knowing if the source was right next to him…or worse, right in front of him. Luckily, he didn't end up tripping over anything, living or no.

Then, suddenly, the torch burned out, and pitch blackness swallowed Wilson.

_It's so dark!_ he thought as sheer terror gripped him - he could see literally nothing whatsoever. On the verge of panic, he fumbled in his pockets for some more grass and twigs to start a new light - he knew he could make a torch by feel, if he could just find the stuff…

The twigs and grass came together in Wilson's hands as he quickly wove them in what he hoped would be the right pattern. Just as he was using two of the twigs to light it, though, he heard something. A low, rasping, threatening roar, seeming to come from all directions, rumbled through the night - a much more threatening, unearthly sound than the spiders' cries.

_What was _that_?_ he thought, almost too terrified to move. He quickly lit the torch he had made - fortunately, it had been crafted perfectly - and light returned to his world, enabling him to see again. He looked around frantically for the source of the sound that had so frightened him, but he couldn't see anything unusual.

He barely had a chance to do more than blink before the sudden sunrise swept the darkness away, revealing only trees, the ground, and the road Wilson had been following.

Wilson's heart pounded as he put out the torch and stuck it in his backpack. _I have no idea what that was,_ Wilson thought, _but I get the feeling that I do _not_ want to find out._ He made a mental note to _never_ allow himself to be caught in pitch-blackness again, not even for a second.

Then he kept walking.

Around midafternoon, as it were, the forest gave way to a grassy field where barely one or two trees grew. Wilson welcomed the return of the berry bushes, grass, saplings, open space, butterflies, and even the carrots and foul-smelling flowers. There were a couple of rabbits in the clearing, each edging around on the ground beside their holes, looking for carrots as usual.

_At least the rabbits are friendly,_ Wilson thought as he kept walking along the road. _Not _everything_ here is a trap…At least, I don't _think_ so…_

He gathered and ate some more berries, and even some carrots - he had been getting hungry. His head was hurting a bit again, but he ignored it. As he passed another rabbit while chewing on his planty meal, it occurred to Wilson that he could probably catch and eat one without too much trouble. _There's no need to eat raw plant foods like a scavenger - I can hunt._

He stepped off the road towards the rabbit, wondering whether or not it would even be frightened by his presence. He got his answer quickly: as soon as he was a few feet away from the rabbit, it made a frightened noise and scurried into its burrow. Out of pure curiosity, Wilson walked over to the rabbit hole and looked inside. Darkness cut off his view immediately beneath the edge of the hole - a lot sooner than it should have.

_It must lead to the Kingdom of the Bunnymen,_ he thought, not sure whether or not he was even joking anymore.

Recognizing that it would probably be futile to try to dig the burrow up, Wilson gave up and returned to the road. As he kept walking, he noticed some ponds here and there in the field around him, each with a few plants growing around the edges. He walked over to the nearest one and looked in, curious. He couldn't see the bottom. _I wonder if there are fish in there,_ he thought. _If there are, maybe there's some way I could catch them?_

A noise that seemed like a cross between a croak and a ribbit came from Wilson's left. He looked over at the sound and saw that a large frog had appeared next to the pond somehow. Its eyes were pure white, almost identical to the spiders', and it had some small horns on its head, but it was still a frog. Wilson smiled. _He's so cute!_ he thought.

Then, the frog opened its mouth and smacked Wilson hard with an enormous tongue.

"Ouch!" Wilson yelped aloud in pain, jumping back; the frog's attack had _hurt_!

The frog jumped closer to him and whacked him with its tongue again. As he cried out with pain again, Wilson noticed some of the yellowish powder he'd collected from the boulders fly out of one of his pockets upon impact.

He quickly turned around, got back on the road, and started running. He could hear the _plop! plop! plop!_ of the frog behind him as it _chased_ him.

_What the heck is going on?_ he wondered frantically as he fled. _It's just a _frog_! I didn't even _touch_ it! Why is it angry with me?_

After a few minutes, the sound of the frog hopping after him faded. He risked stopping and turning around, and he saw the frog hopping back toward the pond Wilson had found it next to.

Wilson shook his head. _I have _got_ to get out of here._

He kept alert as he continued walking, trying to make sense of the creatures around him. The butterflies, birds, and rabbits were harmless, the bees acted naturally (and would presumably attack him if he attacked them first), the frogs were evil, the spiders were huge…Was there any rhyme or reason to how dangerous a creature in this world might be? If there was, he couldn't see the pattern…

The day's surprises weren't over, either. Not five minutes later, Wilson came to a bend in the road, and lying on the ground next to that bend was a bone. It was just a single bone, like a human femur…except that on one end, instead of the knob where the bone would have been jointed, there was a perfect orb, rather reddish, with two tiny horns on it that almost made it look like a blank face.

Wilson stopped and stared. _What in the world is that?_ he thought. _Should I pick it up? Or is it a trap?_

Once again overwhelmed by scientific curiosity, Wilson walked over to the strange object and picked it up, holding it so that the orb was on the top.

As soon as he picked it up, the lid over the orb opened, revealing that it was in fact a large, perfectly spherical eyeball. The eye looked around for a moment, then focused on Wilson. It stared at him. He stared back, unsure what to think.

_Boing! Boing! Boing!_

Wilson jumped at the sound of something approaching from behind him. He turned around and saw an orange, roundish creature, about a third of his height, bouncing towards him on short legs. Before he could react, the creature stopped, just a yard or two away, and stood still.

Wilson looked at the creature. The eye on the bone looked at Wilson. The creature faced Wilson (who was still holding the eye-on-a-bone), its tongue hanging out slightly as it panted like a dog.

"…Hello?" Wilson finally asked.

No response.

Wilson took a step towards the creature, examining it more closely. Its four legs were incredibly stubby, presumably forcing it to hop just to move around. It had two small horns on top of its body, and the mouth almost seemed to go all the way around it, but it had no distinguishable head, and no eyes whatsoever (as far as Wilson could tell).

Wilson looked from the new creature to the eyeball that was staring at him. He noticed that the two little horns on top of the eyeball looked exactly the same as the two little horns on the creature. _An eye without a creature, and a creature without eyes,_ Wilson thought; _they bear a shared characteristic, _and_ this thing appeared when I picked up the bone…_

Hesitantly, Wilson took another step towards the orange creature and held out the bone. "Is this yours?" he asked it.

The creature gave a little hop in place; the eye blinked at him.

Wilson cautiously walked over to the creature, holding the eye-on-a-bone out in front of him. The thing just sat there, panting slightly, even more reminiscent of a dog than before. Finally, Wilson was close enough to reach out with his other hand and touch the orange creature.

It was covered in a short, soft layer of fuzz, immediately underneath which was a tough hide almost like a shell; it kind of made Wilson think of a large, fuzzy pumpkin. It pushed itself up on its legs a bit at Wilson's touch, almost like a house cat that wanted to be pet, and Wilson couldn't help but smile and stroke its…head?…harder. He'd tried having a pet once or twice back in the early days of his social exile, hoping to make the loneliness easier to bear, but each time, one or two failed inventions later, they had disappeared somehow…

Wilson took a closer look at the creature's mouth. The teeth were stumpy and rounded - probably not meant for cutting flesh, he guessed. He carefully put one finger under the upper lip and pushed gently, trying to get a better idea of what-

With a snorting sound, the entire top of the creature unhinged and swung open like a lid. The tongue still hung out, and the creature kept panting, but inside, it was almost completely hollow - there were no visible organs of any kind, not even lungs.

Wilson waited for some indication of what the creature wanted him to do. When none appeared to be forthcoming, Wilson slowly put the eye-topped bone into the creature's body cavity - that seemed like the most reasonable thing. As he did, he noticed that the bone seemed to get smaller - or no, not really, but it took up less space than it should have. Strange…

He thought for a minute, then got an idea. On a hunch, he reached into one of his pockets and pulled out his spear, then tried to put it inside the orange creature. As he had suspected, it fit inside perfectly, and with space left over.

_If I can befriend this creature, it can carry extra stuff for me,_ he thought. _Assuming it's not dangerous, of course…_ Somehow, though, he didn't think it was. It _seemed_ friendly enough, after all, and…and…

Well, nothing; it just seemed friendly.

Wilson spent a minute or so taking out things he wouldn't have immediate need for and putting them in the creature's body cavity - he took his spear back, since he might need it at any moment, though he left the eye-on-a-bone in. The creature kept its mouth open while Wilson was busy, and he started to get the feeling that it wouldn't close its mouth unless he told it to, further suggesting that this creature, whatever it was, was meant to be helpful.

"Okay, you can close your mouth now," he finally told the creature, putting a hand on the lid-like top of the "head".

With another snorting sound, the creature closed its mouth.

Wilson stood up. "Will you come with me?" he asked the creature.

The creature didn't do anything.

"Okay…" Deciding to just assume it would follow him, Wilson continued down the path - it was past dusk by that point, and he hoped to find something else before it got dark.

After about a minute, Wilson registered that he didn't hear the creature following him. He looked back. Sure enough, the creature was still standing right where he'd left it.

"Are you coming?" Wilson called to it. "Come on, pal, this way!"

It still didn't move.

_It goes where the Eye Bone goes._

Wilson blinked. Where had _that_ come from? It didn't feel like his own thought, but it had definitely been in his head…

He sighed and decided, once again, not to question it. He walked back over to the creature, opened it, took the eye-on-a-bone out, and closed it again. Then, he turned back around and kept walking. This time, the creature followed him.

_Boing! Boing! Boing!_

In just the few minutes before night fell, the sound of his new companion following him with its very audible movement became almost comforting to Wilson. _I have a friend,_ he thought almost happily as he stopped for the night and built a small fire just as the sun set. The creature hopped into the light cast by the fire, but didn't get as close as Wilson was; for some reason, it didn't seem afraid of the darkness. Then, it relaxed its little legs so that its body settled on the ground, curled them around itself, withdrew its tongue, and started breathing quietly, clearly asleep. Wilson smiled at the sight.

Half an hour of pitch-blackness passed; Wilson kept the fire going, but mostly spent his time looking at his new companion.

"You need a name," he finally said. "I may not have any idea what exactly you are, but I need to call you something."

The creature stirred. At the same time, Wilson heard a voice in his head say "Chester!"

He blinked. "Chester?" he repeated, not even bothering to wonder whether or not the thought had come from him. "What, because you're a living chest of sorts? No, no, no - if you're going to be my companion, you need a better name. A more…_dapper_ name."

_Chester!_

"No," Wilson repeated. He thought for a moment. "I think I'll call you…Otto," he finally said.

_Chester!_

"_No_," Wilson said again; "you look more like an 'Otto' to me, and I'm not going to call you a silly name like 'Chester'."

_Chester!_ the voice insisted.

"Alright, alright," Wilson said, "let's compromise. I'll give you a _full_ name. How about Otto…_von_ Chester…field. Yes: Otto von Chesterfield. Esquire," he added as an afterthought. "Does that work for you?"

The creature laid back down in its barely-noticeable way and went back to sleep without protest.

"Otto von Chesterfield, Esquire," Wilson repeated, this time to himself; "a much more suitable name for a gentleman's companion." He smiled, feeling less lonely than he had in a long time, as the rest of the night passed by and succumbed to the dawn.


	7. Hounds

Wilson and Otto von Chesterfield, Esquire, continued down the paved road that ran through the land as soon as the sun was up. Wilson's head felt even more muddled than it had the previous day; though having his new friend in tow did help to lift his spirits somewhat, it proved impossible to completely shake away the feeling that something was squeezing his brain.

After just a few minutes of walking, the verdant land gave way to a drier type of grassy land: the grass was yellow-orange and longer - more like straw than yard grass - and while clumps of usefully tall grass grew everywhere, there were no other plants to be found, save the occasional flower. There were a lot of rabbits, though - while it was clear that there were no carrots to be found nearby, there were at least a dozen rabbits within Wilson's field of view edging around their holes, nosing at the ground.

It was then that Wilson noticed that the rabbits' eyes were pure white, the same as those of the spiders and frogs. Surprised, he took a closer look at the next redbird that flew by - for birds were still plentiful in the world, wherever he was - and saw that it, too, had pure white eyes. The next crow to pass was the same.

Interesting.

Wilson glanced back at the Eye Bone, which he held in his right hand (he was ambidextrous, but his left arm was a bit stronger than his right, so he wanted to keep it free); it had a pupil, like eyes were supposed to, but had he seen eyes on anything else here that weren't just white orbs? He couldn't recall…

_Oh well,_ he decided; _it's no reason to not keep moving, at least. I should keep an eye out, though…Maybe whether or not something actually has eyes depends on whether or not it's friendly?_

_Or maybe it doesn't mean anything at all; how would I know?_ he thought resignedly. Then he kept walking.

There were a _lot_ of rabbits - more rabbits and their holes came into view with every step Wilson took into the field. They all quickly scurried away when he came within a few steps of them, but after days of eating nothing but berries and carrots, he found himself wishing more and more that he could catch and eat one.

He stopped when the more verdant land he'd been in was out of sight. The footstep sounds the rabbits were causing all around him were getting maddening, and his headache, while it wasn't quite worsening, was getting harder to ignore. _I don't need my science machine for this,_ Wilson thought; _I can make something to catch those rabbits all on my own._ He started pulling grass and twigs out of his pockets - any other material seemed like it would be too bulky or heavy to be practical - and as Otto von Chesterfield stood beside him, using the eye on the bone to watch, Wilson managed to put together a rabbit trap. He was careful to weave it real tight, so that no small animal would be able to escape once tangled in it. Then, remembering how all rabbits immediately fled to their burrows at the arrival of dusk, he carefully placed his creation over a rabbit hole that was right next to the road he was following, its rabbit having edged far enough away to not be alarmed by Wilson's presence.

_And now we wait,_ Wilson thought, standing back. He _did_ want to keep moving in the hopes of finding a way home, but he didn't know if he would ever be coming back this way again, and he needed to see his invention work.

A couple more hours passed before dusk fell. As Wilson predicted, the moment the sun began to dip below the horizon, all the rabbits squealed and scurried for their burrows; the unfortunate owner of the rigged hole triggered the trap instantly, getting hopelessly tangled in the net of grass that fell onto it when it knocked one of the support twigs out of place.

In a flash, Wilson ran over and picked up the trap, extracting the rabbit from the tangle. He gave the trap to Otto von Chesterfield, then held the rabbit up by the ruff of its neck with the thumb and first finger of his left hand.

"Do you like science?" he asked the rabbit out loud.

The rabbit trembled in his grip.

Wilson hesitated; the poor thing was cute, after all, and completely helpless besides. Still, he was hungry for something he could sink his teeth into, and it was just one rabbit of dozens; a single rabbit wasn't important in the grand scheme of things. So, with a sigh, he took hold of the rabbit's body with his right hand and its head with his left, then quickly twisted its neck a hundred and eighty degrees. With a very tortured squeal that ended with a _snap!_, the rabbit died.

Wilson looked at the corpse in his hands for a moment. He felt bad, but not too terribly so - while he'd never murdered a living thing so blatantly before, as a scientist, he'd put various small rodents through far more gruesome deaths. _At least I was gentleman enough to not make the poor thing suffer,_ he told himself, and he quickly built a fire and started preparing the rabbit to eat. If any of the transpiring events bothered Otto von Chesterfield, the rotund creature gave no indication of it.

Concerned about the possibility of worms or other such parasites or toxins in the raw meat, Wilson took the biggest single chunk of meat he could get on a bone and threw away the rest of the carcass, then roasted the meat over his fire. The resulting amount of meat wasn't very substantial - barely more than a mouthful, really - but it was still meat, which he hadn't even had the option of having for far too long. Of course, aside from cooking it, he had no way to make it very fit for a gentleman, but it was better than nothing by far.

The morsel tasted about as good as Wilson expected - meaty, but rather bland. He was about to wash it down with a handful of raw berries, when he thought of maybe cooking the berries, too. _Why not?_ he thought, and he grabbed a bunch and roasted them. The result was a rather amalgamated mass of red berry mush, almost reminiscent of jam but not really; whether or not heat had improved them wasn't something Wilson could be sure of. It tasted a bit better, though, somehow.

Then, night fell.

_Is it just me, or is dusk getting shorter?_ Wilson thought - he could have sworn that he'd had more time to prepare for full night the first time he had seen dusk come. He looked up, and was surprised to see that, in spite of the fact that the darkness of night was no less absolute than ever, there was a half-moon clearly visible in the sky. _How does that not provide any light?_ he wondered.

Now that he thought about it, the night air felt a lot warmer than it had during his first night in this pseudo-world, too. _Are there seasons here?_ he thought._ Varying lengths of day- and night-times, varying temperature, possible moon cycles indicating months…Everything _implies_ seasons…_

_…Is there going to be a winter?_

That possibility was worrisome. At the very least, it meant that, if he couldn't find a way home soon, he might have to create a permanent settlement. He might also need to create warmer clothing, some way of stocking food…

His train of thought was derailed by a threatening sound in the distance. It sounded like the roar of a vicious animal - not a spider, and not whatever he had heard that one time he'd been caught in the pitch-blackness of night, but something else…

"Did you hear that?" Wilson asked Otto von Chesterfield.

The living chest was fast asleep and didn't respond, but Wilson heard the sound again. Then it came again…and again…

Wilson nervously edged closer to the fire, reaching into his pocket for his spear. The noises sounded distant, but he had a feeling that whatever was making them would reach him sooner or later.

The night passed without any other incidents, though the noises started to sound closer by the time morning came. The fire was still burning at daybreak, if only just, Wilson noticed, and he'd only put one pinecone on it to keep it going during the night. _The nighttime has _definitely_ shortened,_ he thought, _and that implies that right now is about the equivalent of summer, or approaching it…and where there's a summer, there's a winter. I wonder how bad it will be…_

He stroked his beard, trying to decide what course of action he might need to take and how soon, and doing his best to think in spite of the threatening snarls that were sounding closer and closer…

…Wait. Beard?

Suddenly noticing what he was doing, Wilson froze, then carefully felt his face. Yes, he had grown a beard, in the space of only five days. It felt significantly long, more than long enough to cover his face and then some. He took hold of a single hair and pulled it out so he could see how long it was. Surprisingly, it was about two centimeters, maybe a bit more! _That's definitely a much faster hair growth than should happen in so few days, accelerated time or no,_ Wilson thought.

Even during his most intensive work periods, when he got so involved in science that he neglected hygiene, his beard had never grown this long without him shaving it off. Oh, he'd long known about his ability to grow significant facial hair, and while a certain length of beard was gentlemanly to an extent, he had found that having long hairs on his face was rather hazardous to the scientific process - there was just too much risk of them accidentally catching on fire or getting stuck in the mechanisms of a machine he might be trying to make. Out here in the wilderness, he wasn't sure how much of a hindrance his beard would be, but in any case, he had no means of shaving it for the time being.

Suddenly, Wilson noticed that the snarling noises in the distance had stopped. Then, he heard heavy panting and barking, as though from a dog. He turned around, and was confronted by a huge black hound dog running straight for him!

Well, hound dog for lack of a better term: While it had a snout and vicious teeth, and though it barked like a canine of some sort, it had no distinguishable head or neck, and its legs were rather stubby - it sort of looked like an over-simplified version of a hound dog. Still, the fact that its head and body were one and the same meant that its mouth was _huge_.

Wilson wasn't as scared as one might expect. Yes, the hound thing was intimidating, but he had a spear, and when it came right down to it, the hound also looked kind of silly. Besides, no gentleman would cower at the sight of a mere dog.

"You ain't nothing, hound dog!" Wilson shouted at the beast as it ran straight for him, growling and baring its teeth. He readied his spear, and just as the dog reached him, he slashed at the beast, deliberately going for the eyes (which, he noticed, were pure white), as the eyes of an animal are almost universally a weak spot. The monster flinched and whimpered, then regained its stature, opened its huge jaws, and bit Wilson.

Wilson cried out with pain as razor-sharp teeth tore at his flesh. It incapacitated him for a moment, but he managed to get himself together and stab at the hound again. _Go for the eyes!_ he reminded himself. He stabbed a third time, but the hound didn't even seem to weaken - it opened its mouth wide and took another bite out of him; again, Wilson screamed as bladelike teeth ripped through skin and muscle.

Frantic now, Wilson jabbed at the creature's eyes again and again, too panicked to even try to run. After two more stabs, the hound suddenly gave a loud cry, then keeled over, dead.

Wilson panted from a combination of fear, exertion, and adrenaline. After a moment, he looked at his wounds, gingerly putting a hand over them. They didn't look _nearly_ as bad as they felt - they felt deep, but they were bleeding surprisingly little.

Then, Wilson heard more barking.

He turned around, and there was another hound dog running at him, identical to the first. Wilson didn't even have time to think "_Oh no_" before the beast was upon him.

This time, he quickly ran out of its way, narrowly avoiding getting chomped on again. Then he turned around as the hound started barking and slashed at the empty white eyes. When the hound flinched, he struck again, then quickly retreated, again avoiding getting bitten. Becoming more confident with his rhythm, Wilson jabbed at the hound twice again, then retreated, then came forward and stabbed one last time, and the hound died.

Throughout the entire battle, Otto von Chesterfield stood by, silent and complacent.

Wilson took a minute to catch his breath, looking around warily in case there were more. When none appeared, he sighed with relief. The movement caused pain to lance through his body, and he winced and turned his attention to his injuries again, this time inspecting them closely.

The cuts were, indeed, very deep, but there was barely a trickle of blood flowing out of them. Wilson worried at first that he might be bleeding internally, but the more he inspected and prodded his injuries (painfully), the more he got the impression that his blood was simply refusing to flow in directions it shouldn't.

_Different dimension,_ he reminded himself. Fake_ dimension. I suppose that explains my beard, too…I wonder what else will happen in this place._

He looked at the corpses of the two hound dogs he had killed. _Maybe I could use them for meat?_ Wilson thought, and he got down beside one body and tried to do what he could with it. What he got was a very large hunk of meat that would have seemed like a good harvest, if it wasn't for the fact that the flesh was purple, and the skin beneath the fur pitch black.

_Ugh,_ Wilson thought as he thoroughly examined the meat with all his senses; _I'm not sure I should eat this. Still, maybe I'll find some other use for it at some point?_ He had the space to carry it, and he didn't know what he might find a use for, so he tucked the meat away in his backpack, then got another piece of strange meat from the other hound's body and put it away as well. Then, he picked up the eye-on-a-bone and his spear, gave his strange injuries one last pat, and was about to continue walking down the path when he saw a strange shadow in the distance.

It stood out against the golden color of the wheat, but it didn't seem to have any particular source. Wilson squinted, disturbed that he couldn't make out any fine details - his eyesight was 20/20. It looked like…some sort of serpentine creature?

Wilson blinked, and the serpent-like form made a slithering motion and disappeared.

He stared at where the shadow had been. His head was aching. _Am I going insane?_ he wondered.

He sighed; in any event, it would be best to keep moving. "Come along, Otto von Chesterfield," he said to his companion, then resumed walking along the paved road.

The fuzzy creature hopped along behind him.


	8. Curiouser and Curiouser

Wilson found that his wounds, while painful, didn't hinder his movement very much, so the morning proceeded much the same as the last had. He didn't see any more mysterious shadows, and the smell from the garland of flowers he was still wearing almost seemed to ease the pain in his head ever-so-slightly.

Around noon, he noticed that the rabbits that had surrounded him had been left behind, and the field was now smooth and unbroken. _Is there some reason there are no rabbits here?_ Wilson wondered.

Mere moments later, he got his answer.

First, he heard a sound like the clopping of horse hooves. Then a strange lowing sound, sort of like a cow but distinctly different. Intrigued by the sounds, Wilson stepped off the path and in the direction he thought he'd heard them from, and soon, he came upon a small herd of large animals.

They were bigger than the hounds had been, significantly so. They looked sort of like bison, but their fur was straight and so long that it dragged on the ground, and their horns were much larger. Like the hounds, their bodies were very simplified in shape, though these did have distinct heads. Their faces sort of resembled the faces of apes or chimps. Their eyes, like those of all the other animals Wilson had seen, were pure white.

Wilson blinked. Not because he was surprised to see these creatures - they weren't too terribly remarkable - but because he knew _what_ they were: Beefalo.

_"Beefalo"…_ Wilson turned the word over in his mind. _"Beef" and "buffalo". Why…How do I know that? It's just like the carrots…_

He sighed, and told himself, again, not to question it. He was starting to get the feeling that the information he had been given but unable to process back home had been the information he kept somehow getting about this fake world without knowing where it was coming from.

In any case, here were some large animals, and they were probably a good source of meat - _real_ meat, as opposed to whatever the hounds had been composed of. They looked peaceful enough, but Wilson took careful note of their horns. Like most animals, they would almost certainly use their given method of defense if attacked, and Wilson had no desire to be mauled by one of those horns. The question was, would an individual fight back on its own if attacked, or would the whole herd join in?

There was only one way to find out: the scientific method…and despite his passion for science, Wilson decided that he should at least wait until his injuries from the hound attack healed before experimenting with the Beefalo.

He also took careful note of their long fur. If there was going to be a winter, he might be able to use that fur to create some sort of warm clothing. Was there a way he could gather it without angering the owners?

As he watched, one of the Beefalo let out some manure, like any sort of livestock would. Wilson eyed it, thinking. Manure might be useful, too - if he was going to have to make a permanent home base of sorts, farming would be all but vital, and there was no better fertilizer than excrement, he knew; whatever animals couldn't use, plants could. _I should fill my pockets,_ he thought.

_…Another time._

He returned to the road, then took a rock out of one of his pockets and dropped it, so that he would be able to find the Beefalo herd again later. Of course, he very much wanted to not have to, but if he _did_ have to, he wanted to be prepared.

Then he continued on.

Soon, the savanna ended, giving way to…some very confused land. Rocks - both sharp and not - littered the ground everywhere, and the land was a patchwork of all kinds of ground. In some places, green grass grew, but other spots were barren, still others rocky, and some looked like it belonged in a forest. There was a muddy sort of ground here and there, and small gaps in the terrain revealed what looked like bits of ocean.

_What is going on here?_ Wilson wondered; it looked like the world couldn't decide what it wanted to be.

In any case, there were saplings, evergreens, and tufts of grass, as well as the occasional boulder here and there; along with the different rocks that were lying around, the area was rich in resources, and Wilson didn't let any of it go to waste. He gathered whatever he could find, though he held off on breaking boulders - there were plenty of rocks lying around on the ground already, and he didn't want to waste too much time.

Then, Wilson noticed what appeared to be less of a boulder and more of a pile of rubble, and it looked like it was blocking a large hole in the ground. _What could that be, I wonder?_ he thought. _Could I move that rock?_ It didn't look much sturdier than a regular boulder - if anything, it looked _less_ sturdy - so he guessed he could break it without too much trouble. But was it a good idea?

Wilson considered it for a minute, then decided to leave it be for now - maybe, if he had time and reason to do so, he'd come back to it later.

A few steps past the plugged hole, Wilson noticed a thin layer of fog floating just over the ground. It got thicker as he walked through it, but not too thick to see…and what he saw was tombstones. Curious, he approached one.

"Here lies…" The words on it began; Wilson didn't bother reading the rest. _Yeah, yeah, some guy, blah blah blah,_ he thought, not really interested. The tombstone did mark an actual grave, however - one he thought he could dig up. _I bet there's all sorts of good stuff down there,_ he thought, eyeing the mound - depending on the religion, people were often buried with things, possibly even things that might have a practical use. But had he really been reduced to digging up graves? No, he decided, not yet he hadn't.

Still, he looked around. The foggy area really did seem to be a full-blown graveyard - Wilson noticed some unmarked graves, along with those marked with tombstones. The tombstones came in a variety of shapes and sizes; most bore epitaphs along the lines of "here lies some guy, blah blah blah", but one or two were blank, and Wilson also found one that said "milk, eggs, bacon", which happened to have been the very contents of his last shopping list (yes, he shopped for food back home - he had to eat!).

…And then, there was the tombstone that said "Doctor Wilson Percival Higgsbury".

_Hey, that's _my_ name!_ Wilson thought, alarmed. He hesitated a moment, then took out his shovel and dug up the grave the tombstone marked. There was no body; the only thing Wilson came up with was a handful of frazzled old wires, their days of carrying electricity long over. _What the…?_

It was then that it occurred to him that the person who had brought/trapped him here might have put his name on the tombstone just to mess with his head. He sighed, tucking the useless wires into his backpack absentmindedly, and stared at the sight of the dug-up grave. _I should probably feel bad about that,_ he thought. It _did_ make him feel desperate - like less of a gentleman and more of a savage…

He shook his head and walked back to the path. Halfway there, he tripped on something small but hard.

The wind was knocked out of him with an "Oof!" as he belly-flopped onto the ground. The fall was especially painful because of his strange injuries left from the hound attack. He took a breath, irritated, then pushed himself up and turned around to see what he had tripped over.

There, sitting on the ground, almost hidden by the fog, was a nugget of gold.

Wilson blinked. _That will be useful,_ he thought. Gold really _was_ useful, to him at least - it was relatively soft, so it could be somewhat-easily shaped, and it was a very conductive metal, highly useful for machinery. He picked up the nugget and tucked it into his backpack, where he had a few others stored. _Are there more lying around here?_ he wondered. He hadn't really been looking at the ground very hard - only hard enough to find the mounds of overturned earth that marked graves - and the fog was just thick enough to obscure small objects.

He hunted around the graveyard again, this time paying careful attention to where he stepped. He found five more nuggets of gold lying around. Just sitting there. _How convenient,_ Wilson mused as he returned to the path and continued walking on. _I wonder why these were just lying about…_

He was about to leave the graveyard behind when he stopped and fully processed the things he had found. He looked back. _Do any of these graves hold actual bodies?_ he wondered. _If not, why are they here? And if so, why didn't the one that bore my name?_

_…Why_ are_ these here, anyway? Have there been other people before me?_

In any case, there was only one way he might find any answers, and he decided that he had a little time to spare. So, he took out his shovel, walked to the nearest grave - an unmarked one - and started digging.

He found himself repulsed by what he was doing to a surprising degree; though he never found any dead bodies, the simple fact that he was digging up what appeared to be graves for no other reason than curiosity made him feel slightly sick. _Gentlemen don't disturb the dead,_ he thought; _only the most desperate of scavengers do that. Is that really what I've become?_

After four graves, he decided to stop. He had found interesting things, but none of them were particularly useful: A pile of marbles, all slightly melted so that they formed a single amalgamated mass; a kazoo that, upon inspection, turned out to be entirely fake (which made no sense at all); a handful of buttons (Wilson generally preferred zippers); and a piece of rope with a single knot in it that seemed to be stuck forever, impossible to undo, somehow.

Wilson shook his head, packed away the trinkets, and returned to the road. _I really should get going,_ he thought; _I'm wasting time on this, and I'm getting nothing useful out of it._ Besides which, it would be dusk very soon, and he didn't want to spend the night in a graveyard. But as he walked along, he just couldn't resist digging up one last grave that was so close it was almost _on_ the road he followed.

There was nothing in the grave, but once it was dug up, a shapeless white apparition with whiter eyes appeared over the hole.

A ghost.

"Alright," Wilson said out loud, though he didn't know who he was talking to (perhaps his captor?), "that offends me as a scientist." He crossed his arms, glaring at the impossible thing, refusing to be frightened.

The ghost seemed to be giving off a very low-pitched, continuous noise, almost like a moan, and it floated to Wilson. As soon as it reached him, Wilson felt something slash at his skin. Alarmed, he looked down at his arm and saw that, where it touched the ghost, tiny cuts were appearing out of nowhere!

"Aah! I'm sorry!" Wilson exclaimed, and he ran, so fast that Otto von Chesterfield couldn't keep up and started to fall behind. The ghost moved very slowly, though, floating along like a dandelion seed in a very gentle breeze, and after a minute, Wilson couldn't see it anymore when he looked back. Only then did he feel safe slowing down enough to let Otto von Chesterfield catch up again. He didn't stop entirely until just before night fell, though, giving himself only enough time to make a fire before the absolute darkness of night swallowed everything.

Otto von Chesterfield quickly went to sleep, apparently unbothered by the day's events, and Wilson sat down and stared at the fire, thinking. What sort of game was his captor playing with him? _Why_? What was the purpose of all this? _Was_ there a purpose?

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples; his head hurt terribly. As the night went on, he sometimes thought he saw glowing white eyes looking at him from beyond the light cast by his fire, though the apparitions usually vanished as soon as he noticed them. All of this made analyzing his situation very difficult, and Wilson was unable to make any headway in understanding what was happening to him.

Just before dawn came - Wilson could tell by watching the faint moon that provided no light as it crossed the sky - the sound of the ghost became audible again. Wilson turned, and saw that the ghost had caught up with him. It glowed in the dark, and it was still floating towards him, as though it had no other purpose than to follow him.

"I'm sorry I dug you up," Wilson said nervously, but the ghost seemed to take no notice.

Then the sun rose, and as the last of the darkness vaporized, so too did the ghost - Wilson got the impression of whiteness quickly dissolving into the ground.

He blinked. _Alright then,_ he thought. He stood up and glanced at Otto von Chesterfield, who had awoken and looked ready to keep moving. "Come on, pal," he said, and he continued on, leaving the dead behind him.

Or so he thought.


	9. Pigs

His head ached so badly that his vision was blurred slightly, and his injuries from the hounds hadn't even begun to heal. They didn't bleed, so clots couldn't form, and Wilson theorized that this prevented the flesh from knitting back together. Still, he carried on, primitive spear in hand and Otto von Chesterfield hopping along behind him.

After a little ways, the confused land ended and settled on being a forest again. It was another thick forest, and Wilson sometimes thought he caught sight of something - a splash of color that could be a flower, or a bit of white that could be a spiders' nest - through the trees, but he didn't feel like investigating. He just wanted out.

Then, around noon, he saw a clearing up ahead, a meadow of grass surrounded by thick woods…and in that meadow, he saw houses.

His eyes widened, and he picked up his pace, all but leaving Otto von Chesterfield in the dust. _There _are_ people here!_ he thought, excited.

The paved road ended right in the middle of the clearing, and Wilson counted at least half a dozen houses around him, probably more, though he couldn't be sure because of his weirdly blurred vision. The residents looked strange, though he couldn't place his finger on why. He approached one.

"Excuse me," he began.

The person turned to look at him, then squealed - literally, _squealed_ - and ran a short distance away, exclaiming, "You back off!"

It was a pig-man.

It walked on two legs and had a dry grass skirt covering its loins, but its head, while hidden from behind by a hunched back, was distinctly that of a pig, and its hands and feet were hooves. Wilson also noticed that its eyes weren't white, but all the same, if he was honest with himself, the pig-man kind of creeped him out.

Suddenly, there was an enormous commotion to Wilson's left. Squeals of "You go smash!" and "No like spider!" rang out from the edge of the clearing.

_"You go smash"?_ Wilson thought. _Primitive people, rudimentary English…less than even a child just old enough to attend school would be capable of. Interesting._

Curious, he walked over towards the chaos, joined by several pig-men as they heard what was happening and ran to join in. A spiders' nest, bigger than the one Wilson had first seen - it looked like the spiders had built a second lobe on top of the first, almost doubling the nest in size - happened to be just at the edge of the clearing in which the pigs resided. Apparently, one of them had gotten a little too close to the nest, and the spiders inside had attacked; unlike Wilson, however, the pigs fought back.

Wilson watched closely, staying far enough back to not be targeted by the spiders himself. The pigs fought by striking a spider with their bare…hooves?…once, then running away before their quarry could bite them. It was an effective tactic, the largest problem being that one spider - a particularly nasty-looking one, yellow with stripes and a spiky, almost armored appearance - could leap great distances while biting, so running away didn't help the pigs that attacked that one. In other places, pigs were overwhelmed simply because two or more spiders teamed up on an individual; Wilson noticed that, unlike the pigs, the spiders didn't retreat after biting a pig before attacking again, and though they flinched when struck, in cases where the fight was more than one spider on one pig, the other spiders would catch up with the pig and bite it. And yes, the spiders bit their foes, with their teeth (which may or may not have been poisonous), almost like hounds or predatory cats; the bites looked very painful, much more so than the pigs' attacks, and no less so for the lack of realism to the behavior.

All the same, with the numbers of pigs and spiders being about equal, the pigs ultimately won, with only a few casualties. In a way, Wilson was impressed.

He approached the now-empty nest, studying it closely. Yes, the webbing was much thicker than the sort of cobwebs he'd find back home…possibly even useable.

Wilson raised his spear; in any case, the nest was empty, but it might not stay that way if left alone, so breaking it was probably a good idea. He slashed and stabbed at the nest; it was surprisingly resistant to his attacks. It took several minutes before the lumpy thing finally gave up and shredded all at once, leaving only four salvageable cobwebs.

Wilson picked one up. It wasn't at all like a real cobweb, more like a cobweb-shaped piece of cloth - there were no holes in the material, and the actual strands were more like veins in a leaf. It was smooth - rather silky, actually - but also slightly sticky.

Interesting.

Wilson picked up the four cobwebs and tucked them away in his backpack. It was then that he noticed the surviving pigs salvaging chunks of black-skinned purple flesh from the bodies of some of the spiders and eating them.

_So spiders and hounds are made of the same sort of toxic meat,_ Wilson thought. _The pigs can eat this stuff, even if I can't…Maybe they'll take kindly to being offered food?_

"Hey, you," Wilson said, reaching into his pack and approaching the nearest pig.

It turned to him. "What you got?" it grunted.

Wilson took out one of the hunks of hound meat he had gathered the previous day and offered it to the pig. The pig took it and ate it all in one big bite.

"Yum!" it said happily. When it was finished, it approached Wilson, keeping only a slight distance. "You is good," it said.

Wilson blinked. "Alright then…" He turned and started approaching another pig.

"I follow," the pig he had just fed said, and it did indeed follow Wilson as he walked.

Wilson stopped and looked back at the pig. The pig did a little happy dance and said, "I love friend!"

"Alright…" Slightly unsettled, Wilson turned to the pig he had been approaching. "Hey, I have something for you," he said to it, reaching into his backpack for the other piece of hound meat.

The pig turned to him. "Better be good," it grunted.

Wilson gave him the meat. "Time for food," the pig said happily, and like the other, it ate the whole thing in one bite. "You friend," it said to Wilson when it was done.

"Alright," Wilson said again. They certainly seemed to be friendly to the hand that fed them.

Since he had no more meat, Wilson decided to search the dead spiders' bodies for some the pigs might have missed, or for something else he might be able to use. The two pigs he had fed followed close behind him.

_I appear to have an entourage,_ Wilson thought, and this made him feel much better. A semi-intelligent people, serving him, the superior gentleman - just as it should be. What exactly they might do for him, he would experiment with later.

One of the spiders was apparently too damaged to salvage the strange, toxic meat from, so Wilson was left alone to investigate it. What he found was that the spider was mostly stomach and intestines, but there was a gland attached specifically to the teeth that caught Wilson's eye - at a guess, he'd say it was a gland meant to produce venom. He pulled it out and studied it thoroughly with all he senses. It had a tangy, antiseptic-y sort of smell.

_Venom is actually highly useful as medicine in some situations,_ Wilson thought. _I wonder…_

He broke open the gland and rubbed it against his wounds from the hounds, just to see what would happen. It stung for just a moment, then felt noticeably better. When Wilson looked, the venom from the gland had disappeared, but his injuries even _looked_ a bit less severe, if only a bit.

_Very_ interesting.

There were only two other dead spiders that the pigs hadn't already eaten, and both of them were too damaged to salvage meat from - the pigs seemed to know what they were doing, somehow. One of the bodies belonged to the yellow spider; upon closer inspection, Wilson found that it was indeed armored in a way - it had a tough exoskeleton that the other spiders lacked. As a result, it had taken more blows before dying, hence the damage was too significant to salvage the meat. The venom gland had escaped harm, though, and Wilson noticed that it appeared to be the same size as the venom gland of the normal spider.

This was turning out to be a very interesting day, Wilson reflected as he broke open the gland and rubbed it on his injuries.

The last spider had been hit in such a way that the venom gland had already broken, and there was no way to salvage any of the venom _or_ meat. Still, Wilson studied the corpse for something, and after a minute, he was rewarded. Near the back of the spider's body, where Wilson would guess the rear of the abdomen would be on a real spider, there was another gland that, when broken open, turned out to contain spiderweb material. Wilson took it out, and it unraveled into another of the strange cloth-webs. He tucked it into his backpack with the others.

With that, there was nothing left from the battle with the spiders for Wilson to investigate. So, he returned to what seemed to be the pig village, to get a better idea of what there was. His two pigs and Otto von Chesterfield followed faithfully behind him.

The houses, he noticed, were really quite fancy, considering each of them only housed one pig. They actually slightly resembled his own house back in the real world, with a round window on the top floor just under the peak of the roof. _Hmm…Well…that could mean anything, or nothing,_ Wilson thought - it certainly wasn't an usual design for a house, and really, why should it mean anything at all? They were just houses.

A little further in, Wilson discovered what appeared to be a small flower garden - about a dozen flowers were growing in a cluster, right outside one of the houses. _I suppose pigs _would_ like the smell,_ he thought, repulsed. Near the edge of the clearing where he had come in was a small carrot patch, and on the far side from where the battle with the spiders had taken place, there was a thick patch of broad-leafed bushes that appeared to have red berries growing on them. Wilson picked one of the bushes clean; in his hand, the berries appeared to be exactly the same as the ones he'd been getting from bushes in the wild, but these were clearly cultivated.

Interesting.

There was one last interesting discovery waiting for Wilson that day. On the far side of the clearing from where he had entered, an enormous pig, several times the size of any of the others, sat on a wooden floor, with eight strange, pointed rocks - four tall, four short - arranged around it. It wore an enormous skirt of grass, and also a large headdress of sorts. The stench coming from what Wilson could only guess was the pigs' king was positively acrid.

Wilson stepped back, too tired to wonder what purpose this giant, stinking pig could possibly serve. It had to do _something_ - after all, this place wasn't real, everything had been created deliberately, so everything had to have _some_ sort of purpose - but Wilson had had enough discovery for one day.

And then, as though the world itself was listening in on his thoughts, dusk fell. Around him, the various pigs started squealing "Home! Home!" and running for their houses. The pig king didn't move, but Wilson guessed it probably wasn't able to due to its size. The two pigs he had befriended with his gifts of monster meat started running around in a panic, apparently unwilling to return home and leave him behind but afraid of the coming darkness all the same.

Interesting.

Wilson quickly lit a fire right where he stood. The two pigs rushed into the range of the firelight.

"Where sun go?" one of them squealed.

"No like dark," the other said.

Wilson looked at them, first at one, then the other. They were terrified, and very grateful for his fire. But what was the thing in the darkness that scared even semi-intelligent creatures so much? Wilson very much wanted to know.

"Why are you afraid of the dark?" he asked them.

"Scary," one grunted.

"Scary," the other agreed.

Wilson sighed; these pigs weren't going to be very good conversationalists, that much was clear.

He looked at the occupied houses around him. In the nearest one, he could see a snout pressed up against the window. He approached it, hoping to get a better look, but when he got close, the light inside suddenly went out. He guessed the pig was trying to make it look like the house wasn't occupied, out of fear; based on what he'd seen of these pigs, something at the level of intelligence of another pig probably would have been fooled, too.

But Wilson was not a pig. "Come _on_!" he shouted at the house. "I know you're home!"

No response.

Wilson sighed and walked back over to his fire. He was very tired…so tired that he really wished he could find some means of sleeping.

…Actually, he had the materials needed to construct a new science machine, and this pig village was as good a place to settle as any.

_Well…why not?_ he decided.

"Come here, pal," he said to Otto von Chesterfield, in whom he had stored his rocks and gold. The living chest hopped over to Wilson's side and opened its mouth at his beckoning. He took out one nugget of gold and four rocks, then closed Otto von Chesterfield's mouth again. The rotund creature settled down and went to sleep.

Pulling out a few of his extra logs, Wilson got to work building a new science machine. It came together faster than the first one had, as he already knew how to set it up. In less than a minute, the machine was whirring and clunking in its standby state, ready for use.

But what would he use?

Wilson tossed in a rope, figuring he'd make something like a sleeping bag, then started tossing in handfuls of grass until the machine was completely full. He pulled the lever.

_Clunk, clatter, clatter, clunk, ding!_

As reliably as the first machine had, the new science machine spat out the ingredients it had been fed, along with visual instructions for how to use them. Wilson quickly wove about half of the grass and the rope together, stuffed the resulting bag with the rest of the grass, and a minute later, he had what could pass as a mat on which to rest. It smelled wet, for some reason, but beggars couldn't be choosers, after all.

Wilson unrolled the mat, laid down on it, and with great relief, allowed sleep to overtake him.


	10. Getting Settled

**Sorry, I slightly messed this one up the first time around. Reupload!**

* * *

When Wilson awoke, he was positively starving.

"Ohh, I'm so hungry," he groaned before he even opened his eyes. He must have forgotten to eat the previous day…again. Not unusual, but why does he do this to himself?…

"You is good."

"You friend."

Wilson's eyes snapped open at the sound of the pigs' voices. In a rush, all his memories of the past few…days?…came back to him, and he remembered where he was.

He pushed himself up. The mat of grass he had slept on had shredded while he slept, and was completely unusable now - not even a single blade of grass was salvageable. He checked the sun. It appeared to be early morning, yet despite the incredibly short amount of actual time that constituted the night in this fake world, he felt well-rested, albeit starving. _Accelerated time,_ he reminded himself.

Next, he checked his injuries. There was no change. _Darn it,_ he thought; _I'd hoped that sleeping might help my body heal. Looks like that doesn't work…_

All the same, his head felt quite a bit better, and overall, he was glad he'd slept.

He was just _so hungry_…

He remembered his findings from the previous day, specifically the carrot and berry gardens. He was closer to the berry bushes at the moment, and he made a beeline for them as fast as he could go. His pigs and Otto von Chesterfield followed him.

In short order, Wilson picked the bushes clean, one at a time, shamelessly stuffing the berries into his mouth - he really was that hungry. After he'd finished off eleven bushes, he felt much better, almost full. There were still three bushes that had their berries, but Wilson was ready to stop.

Suddenly, with a loud "Gobble-obble-obble!", what appeared to be an enormous turkey popped out of one of the berry bushes Wilson had picked clean. Wilson barely had a chance to do more than blink before the turkey thing ran the short distance to one of the unpicked berry bushes and, with a single sweep of both its wings, which it used like hands, gathered up all the berries off the bush and somehow shoved them all into its mouth at once.

"Hey!" Wilson exclaimed. "Get away from my berries, you stupid bird!" He pulled out his spear and ran at the turkey thing. The bird ran from him, making surprised exclamations, and was just a little bit faster than he was; all Wilson could do was chase it away so that it wouldn't come back to eat the rest of the berries. Once they were a fair distance into the woods, Wilson stopped. _I sure showed him,_ he thought.

Then he noticed that his pigs had been running behind him, and passed him now; they appeared intent on chasing down the bird. Wilson blinked. _Are they doing that just for me?_ he thought. _That's nice, but I doubt they'll be very effective…_

He was right; the bird was just fast enough to avoid the pigs, though the two pursued it relentlessly.

"Hey!" Wilson called to them. "Give it up! It's alright!"

They ignored him.

_Wonderful,_ Wilson thought. _Stupid pigs…_

A minute later, however, the pigs somehow cornered the turkey thing and, with one blow each, killed it. They then ran back over to Wilson…then ran back to the dead turkey, apparently intending to eat it.

"Oh, no you don't!" Wilson said, and he ran over to the bird carcass and shooed his pigs away. They didn't listen very well, but for some reason, they still wanted to keep some distance between him and them, so they backed off all the same.

Wilson found that what the pigs had cornered the bird against was a ledge that dropped off steeply into what appeared to be an ocean. Wilson looked over the edge. It was a long drop, the water was tumultuous, and there was no way back up; the bird would have died if it had jumped, only much more slowly.

_So…the edge of the world appears to be an ocean,_ Wilson thought as he gathered what meat he could from the dead turkey thing. _Unusually realistic for this world. I wonder if there's some way to cross it, and, if so, whether there's anything beyond it…_

Probably not, but that was another experiment for another day.

From the large turkey thing, Wilson was able to get a smallish chunk of meat, and also a whole drumstick. Only one drumstick, oddly enough…the other leg simply refused to come off as a whole. Oh well. Food was food, and he knew now that he needed it badly. _Starvation is the biggest danger to guard against here,_ Wilson thought; _nearly any risks I take will be for the sake of food. That, or a way home…_

He really wanted to go home. He'd never been exactly happy there, it was true, but at least he hadn't had to fight just to survive. _What's that old saying? "You don't know what you've got until it's gone"? No kidding…_

"Time for food," he heard one of the pigs say.

He looked up, just in time to see the pig pick up something very small on the ground and eat it happily. The other pig looked at Wilson and made a strangely human-like pouting face, rubbing his stomach with one hoof. _Their loyalty might fade if I don't keep them fed,_ Wilson thought. He looked at the meat he had salvaged from the bird. _Well, I _am_ full…and these pigs _did_ get me this meat in the first place…_

Sighing, Wilson walked over to the hungry pig and gave it the drumstick. "Here," he said.

The pig ate it happily. "I love friend," it said.

"Yeah, yeah," Wilson muttered. "Here, you can have this," he said to the other pig, holding out the other morsel of meat he'd managed to get out of the big bird.

"I eat food," the pig said as it happily ate the meat. Again, Wilson sighed.

_So, they'll kill things for me,_ he thought. _What else will they do?_ He looked around at the thick forest they were in. _I used a lot of logs last night…I should probably get more,_ he thought, and he took out his axe and started chopping down a tree.

"Smash mean tree!" one of the pigs exclaimed, and it began punching another tree down with its hoof; its fellow did the same.

_Hello,_ Wilson thought, pausing in his work to look. _What's this?_

The pigs kept punching their trees, then stopped when they noticed that Wilson had stopped, too.

_Monkey see, monkey do,_ Wilson thought, and he resumed cutting down his own tree. As he expected, the pigs resumed as well.

Wilson managed to get three times as many logs as he would have normally with the help of his entourage - somehow, the pigs' hooves were just as effective as an axe. They were really quite useful, Wilson reflected as he packed away the last of the logs and pinecones. He had enough to last him for a couple of weeks now, unless he started using lots of wood for some reason or other, in which case he'd be able to afford to do so.

In any case, Wilson walked back into the pig village, headed for the science machine he'd made the previous evening. It made sense to set up a sort of permanent residence here, in a way - a home base, where he could keep excess supplies and build things to help him survive. He had a feeling that there was a _lot_ more to this world than he knew, and if nothing else, the pigs around him would be helpful in a fight if more hounds - or something worse - came for him.

And then there was the pig king. Wilson approached the smelly behemoth, his eyes watering, curious. If he gave meat to regular pigs, they followed and aided him; what would happen if he fed the king?

Well, he didn't have any meat at the moment. Still…something felt significant about the enormous pig, something more than just its size. Maybe it was the flooring it sat on and the weird-looking rocks around it…The four short rocks looked more like pyramids than obelisks, and the four that really looked like obelisks also looked…strange…

_Another day,_ Wilson thought as he returned to his science machine. It occurred to him that, if he really was planning on building a permanent home base, the first thing to do would build a more permanent light source than one of his campfires. Technically, he could burn anything flammable, but not if it was just lying on the ground by itself…

Ten minutes and twelve rocks later, Wilson had built a fire pit, in which he could ignite anything of any size without fear of it catching something nearby on fire or being blown about by the wind. _This will be the epicenter of whatever sort of home base I build,_ Wilson thought, satisfied with his invention. _Now…how many pseudo-days have I been here?_

He thought for a minute, stroking his beard absentmindedly. There had been his first night, when he'd discovered his instinctive fear of the dark…the second night, at the end of which he'd built his first science machine…the third, which he had spent using the science machine…the fourth, which he'd spent on the move…the fifth, after he'd met Otto von Chesterfield…the sixth, after which the hounds had come…the seventh, after he'd dug up some graves…and the eighth, last night, when he'd finally slept. He was coming up on his ninth night since being trapped here. _Accelerated time or no, it's moving fast here,_ Wilson reflected. _I think it's safe to say at this point that I won't be finding my way home any time soon…probably not for a very long while, in fact. As of now, the best course of action is to set up a permanent settlement and not go exploring again until my shelter is at least passable._

_So, I have a more permanent light source…the next thing I need is a wall._

Wilson started unpacking everything - his pockets, his backpack, and even Otto von Chesterfield. He needed to take stock of everything he had.

He had: Sixty-four logs, twenty pinecones, twenty-five sharp rocks, ten not-sharp rocks, two dozen flowers (which were starting to rot), forty bundles of twigs and thirty-one lengths of cut grass (he'd been careful to keep those two resources at a constant amount, but hadn't replenished the grass since the previous night), ten gold nuggets, five lengths of rope, two stone blocks (which he'd made by tossing not-sharp rocks in his first science machine), two wooden boards (also refined in the first science machine, from logs), five cobweb-cloths, one partially used spear, one partially used shovel, one partially used pickaxe, one barely-used small animal trap, one hammer that he had no use for at the moment but had made anyway, one hat made entirely out of grass, the eye-on-a-bone that belonged to Otto von Chesterfield, one lump of melty marbles, one handful of buttons, one handful of frazzled wires, one impossible knot on a small length of rope, and one fake kazoo. He had no food on him - he'd eaten the last of his supply the previous day, and all he could take off the bushes this morning.

A redbird fluttered past. Suddenly, one of the pigs following Wilson said, "I eat food," and started walking towards the spot the bird had taken off from.

"Oh, no you don't," Wilson said, hurrying over to see what the pig was after. What he found when he examined the ground was that somehow, some tiny green seeds, just enough to fill the palm of his hand, had been left behind when the bird had taken off. He picked them up and studied them intensely. He could find no means of figuring out what they might grow into if planted. _Each one is a tiny mystery,_ he thought. _I know I have fertilizer - Beefalo manure - about a day and a half from here…perhaps I really _could_ start growing crops._ He pocketed the seeds and returned to the resources he had scattered about on the ground. The other pig was studying the fake kazoo, nudging it with its foot and staring at it curiously.

Wilson picked up the fake kazoo. "You like this?" he asked the pig.

The pig said nothing.

"Hmm…" Wilson thought. He had no use for the trinket, himself, but…

On a sudden burst of inspiration, Wilson ran over to the pig king. Trying not to be too repulsed by the smell, he held out the fake kazoo and said to the enormous creature, "If I may make an offering to…erm…your highness…"

To his surprise, the pig king took the fake kazoo right away and stashed it away somewhere. Then, it raised its front hooves over its head and made a throwing motion, and to Wilson's alarm, six gold nuggets rained down out of nowhere around the giant pig.

He stared at the pig king. The creature gave an enormous smile and a squeal of delight, waving its arms with joy, then reassumed its sedentary pose. Cautiously, Wilson picked up the six gold nuggets, needing to use his magical pockets to bear the weight. The huge pig made no move to stop him.

_Interesting,_ Wilson thought. _So the king likes useless junk. I wonder if the rest of it would appeal to him…_

Wilson put down the six new gold nuggets with his ten others, then picked up the marbles, buttons, knot, and wires, and returned to the pig king. The giant pig took all of it, and gave gold nuggets in return: four for the marbles, two for the buttons, two for the knot, and five for the wires. Wilson wondered what exactly determined how valuable one piece of junk was compared to another and why. That, though, was a mystery he'd probably never solve; for all he knew, it could be completely arbitrary. Still, it gave him reason enough to dig up the rest of the graves in the graveyard when he went back for Beefalo manure.

It was past midday by that point, and sweltering hot, especially for Wilson with his beard. He stroked it again, this time mindfully. _I need to shave,_ he thought. He looked at his supplies, then at his science machine. _That shouldn't be too difficult, should it?_

He tossed some twigs and sharp rocks into his science machine and pulled the lever. Out came the materials, along with visual instructions, which he followed, resulting in what could function as a razor - though really, it was just a sharpened rock tied to a stick. _How hygienic,_ Wilson thought cynically. All the same, he brought the blade to his face and started cutting hairs.

The razor worked surprisingly well, leaving not even the slightest hint of stubble behind. Wilson felt much better once he was clean-shaven - both more gentlemanly and less baking hot. He was also left with a handful of hairs he'd made with his face, which he could probably use at some point, somehow.

He took note of the temperature again. _This is definitely a summer,_ Wilson thought, _which all but confirms my suspicion that there will be a winter. I'll need to pay careful attention to the temperature for the next few days, or however long it takes to notice a change or pattern._

_…I could build a machine to do that, couldn't I?_

It was worth a shot.

It took two hours' worth of tinkering, but Wilson finally managed to get something together, using two nuggets of gold and two sets of wooden planks. By the time he was done, the two pigs he had enlisted had deserted him and returned home, presumably because he didn't have more meat for them; Wilson barely noticed. His finished invention resembled an enormous thermostat; right now, the color indicator was pushing at the very peak, past the highest measurable temperature. _I'll call this a Winterometer, since it will help me determine when winter might come,_ Wilson thought.

He had other things to do, but for a few minutes, he just stood where he was, admiring his creation. _I am one heck of a scientist,_ he thought proudly. He might have stood there until nightfall, were it not for the fact that it suddenly and without warning started to rain.

Wilson looked up at the sky. _When did it get so cloudy?_ he wondered; it was very overcast, even though the Winterometer was still indicating an unmeasurably high temperature. As for the rain… _Well, I should have seen that coming,_ Wilson thought, almost amused with himself for not anticipating the existence of weather.

Wilson had never been the sort to play in the rain; he somewhat prided himself in the way his hair grew into a shape resembling his first initial, and he didn't like anything that might ruin it. Now, however, he had no building to enter, no roof to get under, to shelter himself from the rain; he had no way of keeping from getting completely drenched as the rain started coming down harder.

_Wonderful,_ Wilson thought miserably as dusk fell. It was positively pouring by then, and now it was getting dark, too. He didn't need to be a brilliant scientist to know that lighting and maintaining a fire was going to be a lot more difficult in the rain, but he needed the light. _I haven't even started building any sort of wall around my home; all I've got is this temperature gauge._

_…Could I maybe make a machine that will predict the weather for me, so that I won't be caught unprepared like this again?_

Again, it was worth a shot.

Unfortunately, Wilson didn't manage to tinker his way into discovering such a design before true nightfall, the exact start of which he miscalculated due to not being able to actually see the sun. As the darkness fell, he threw a few logs into his fire pit in a panic, lighting them quickly. To his surprise, they did in fact catch fire, though they definitely weren't burning as brightly as they would have if they were dry.

Wilson maintained the fire that night with an odd composure with which he even surprised himself. Yes, it was raining, and yes, there was something in the darkness that wanted to…eat him, maybe, but he was getting settled in place and starting to build some actual structures to defy all the nature around him. That was nice.

The night lasted about an hour - nowhere near as long as it had been when Wilson had first been trapped in this fake world. That was also nice, though the rain didn't let up. Wilson resumed tinkering, and around midday, he had built a Rainometer, which would measure the severity of cloudiness for him, indicating when it might start to rain.

It wasn't until after he set it up that he realized that he still had no way of protecting himself from the rain, even if he did know when it was coming.

Oh well. He was still a brilliant scientist.

It was, if possible, even hotter than it had been the previous day; the Winterometer was still indicating a temperature far above what it could actually precisely measure. All the same, Wilson, feeling he'd wasted too much time already, picked up his shovel and his backpack, along with about half of his grass and twigs so that he could make torches to get through the night, and turned to go. He considered bringing Otto von Chesterfield, but decided against it, instead leaving the Eye Bone (which was what it was really called, he somehow knew) sitting next to its owner, so that the fuzzy creature could rest and look around, appreciating its surroundings, if it did such things. He gave Otto von Chesterfield an affectionate pat on the head before going. "Take it easy, pal," he said; "I'll be back in a couple of days."

He started to walk away, then paused, looking at all the stuff he had scattered around on the ground. It was quite a mess. _I really should do something about this, _he thought. _I'll deal with the matter of walls later, but for now…_

The solution wasn't too difficult: He tossed some wood into his science machine, and when that didn't work, he turned them into boards and then tossed them back in. It took three sets of boards, but he was quickly able to build a chest. Like all other storage containers in this fake world, it was a lot bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. It still wasn't quite enough, but he easily stored the rest of his materials inside Otto von Chesterfield.

As he packed his things away, he realized he needed to take some of the sharp rocks as well, in case his shovel broke, and his spear, in case something attacked. He also decided to bring his razor, remembering the long fur of the Beefalo, and his small animal trap, so he could catch some more of the numerous rabbits, maybe even bring some live ones home. _It's a good thing I stopped to get my stuff together,_ he reflected as he set out again, following the paved road back in the direction he had come. He had brought his backpack, just in case the amount of junk he dug up was significant, and he'd noticed that the garland he'd made on his second night had disintegrated entirely, so he'd made himself another one, mainly just because he had no other use for the flowers he'd gathered.

He left the pig village, walked through the thick forest, and returned to the confused land. When night came, he quickly made a torch, then kept walking.


End file.
